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SUNDAY-SCHOOL DEPARTMENT. 

Pi'BLisHiNa House op the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. 
Barbee & Smith, Agents, Nashville, Tenn. 

1891. 




/ 



Entered, according to Act of Counress, in the year 1890, 

By the Book Agents op the Methodist Kpiscopai. Church, South, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 


TO THE READER. 


The stories, letters, and articles fovxnd in this ^little 
book have been selected from a large store at the re- 
quest, in each case, of a score or more of admiring 

i 

friends, both old and joung. They are given to the 
public because the public asked for them. 

The main thread of all the stories is true, as I now 
remember things. How much they may have taken on 
or dropped off in the lapse of time I cannot tell. I 
hope they will afford both pleasure and profit to all 
who may read them. « 

R. G. Porter. 

Senatobia, Miss., October i, 1890. 


p 





% 



<- • 

, « 



INTROD UCTION. 


The following sketches will be read with delight by 
our young people, especially “the boys,” for whom the 
author has written so many charming stories. The 
topics are well chosen, touching such matters as enter 
more or less into every child’s experience, and they are 
judiciously treated. The author knows a boy’s feel- 
ings, his way of looking at things, and his read}' and 
decided manner of dealing with practical problems. 
He has been a child himself, and has not forgotten *it. 
His hearty sympathy with the young has made him 
many friends among the children, and opened to him 
the door of every home in the Southern ^^ethodist 
Church. His style is admirably adapted to the young: 
plain, easy, and clear, with a rich vein of humor run- 
ning like a golden thread through it, and flashes of 
subtle wit playing on its surface. The reader’s atten- 
tion is kept steadily to the point, while his feelings 
move along in playful harmony with the incidents of 
the story. In other words, the author tells a story well. 
He enjoys it himself, and does not conceal the pleasure 
it affords him, yet never descends into the regions of the 
frivolous or profane. He never “ carries the joke too 
far.” 

The author is a Christian and a minister of the gos- 

( 5 ) 


6 


INTRODUCTION. 


pel. This he never forgets, but seeks to teach in every 
sketch some moral lesson. This, however, he does in 
a natural and unobtrusive way, without “preaching” 
at them, as the boys say. Not because he values the 
moral lessons less than he does the entertainment 
which the stories afford, but because he knows the boys 
will “skip” any formal moralizing appended to sto- 
ries. His sprightliness as a writer, his sense of hu- 
mor, his unaffected simplicity and straightforwardness 
give him great influence with children. GYown-up 
people, who retain any of the freshness and zest of 
early life, will also enjoy these sketches. They will 
recall many a forgotten scene of early boyhood, and 
carry the older readers back to flelds and woods and 
flowers still fragrant with the dews of young life. 
We shall be disappointed if this little book does not 
become a favorite with our young people. 

W. G. E. CUNNYNGHAM, 

Sunday-school Editor. 

Nashville, Tenn., October, 1890. 



CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Dishface 9 

My First Wild Turkey i8 

Training a Dog to Hunt Coons 22 

Joe Bowers 28 

“November” 35 

Now Boys, Don’t 41 

Sister Fenley’s Scripture 44 

“ Uncle Dick ” •. . . 52 

“Old Jim” 59 

Holiday Thoughts 64 

Is There Harm in Dancing? 70 

Good Old Grandmothers 74 

A Snipe Hunt 77 

Genuine Faith and Correct Faith 80 

Sallie Taylor is Dead 84 

The Mississippi Gorilla 89 

Talking to His Horse 96 

A Goat Story loi 

Somewhat “Snappish:” An Epistle for Dys- 
peptics 106 

“Uncle Dickey ” m 

A Stubborn Boy 1 16 


8 CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

“Old Kit” 124 

“Uncle Jay” 130 

“ Aunt Anniky ” 137 

“Aunt Patsy” 142 

Lap-pa-tubby 148 

“Uncle Burt” 152 

“Old Bright” 157 

A Christmas Letter 164 

Cold Weather Letter 172 

Special Providence 179 

“OldSook’V 185 

A Christmas Story 191 

The Battle of Willow Branch 202 

Two Stampedes 211 





m. 



ODD HOURS. 

^ 1 ^ 

DISHFA CE, 

D ishface was one of the best cows 
that ever grazed the greensward of 
the prairies of Mississippi. She was 
a little, low, pied, crumple-horned, dish- 
faced cow, as gentle as a lamb, and one of 
the best milkers, of her size, I ever saw. 
When she was about ten days old, her moth- 
er died and left her an orphan in the world. 
Mother gave the motherless calf to me on 
condition that I would take care of it and 
raise it. I was then about twelve years old ; 
and I had a natural fondness for all living 
things when they were young, innocent, and 
tender — particularly for calves, pigs, and ba- 
bies. I deserve no credit for loving chil- 
dren, for it is just as natural to me as it is 
for water to run down hill. All the sympa- 

( 9 ) 



lO ODD HOURS. 

thy of my boyish heart was called out for 
that little motherless calf. Its piteous bleat- 
ings were enough to have moved a heart of 
stone. 

By inserting my fingers in the calf’s 
mouth, and dipping my hand into a cup of 
milk, I soon taught the little thing to drink 
milk as it would drink water. It would 
have done you good to see m}^ orphan calf 
dispatch a pan of milk. It was a little pro- 
voking when it persisted in “ nudging” the 
pan after the milk was out, just as it had 
done its mother while she lived. My calf 
grew rapidly, and soon began to fatten like 
a pig. It was a great pet in our family. I 
found about as much real pleasure in play- 
ing mother to that calf as I ever found in 
any thing during my boyhood days.- 

When mother left home in cold weather, 
we boys always brought Dishface into the 
house, where she could get the benefit of 
the fire; and she seemed to enjoy the 
warmth of the fire as much as any other 
member of our family. I say one of the 
family, because Dishface was one with us. 
The instincts of the calf were so changed. 


DISHFACE. 


II 


or SO cultivated, that it soon came to love 
the company of children more than it did 
the society of calves. 

Dishface soon learned to eat almost every 
thing we ate, except meats. There was not 
a carnivorous tooth in her head. She would 
drink coffee, if it were not too hot and 
strong; but we could not teach her to use 
pepper-sauce and vinegar, and condiments 
of that kind, though we tried never so hard. 
Dishface was a little spoiled in some things, 
as most petted animals get to be. She was 
particularly fastidious about the water she 
drank. It had to be nice and sweet and 
clean. When she was about eighteen 
months old she got badly choked by get- 
ting a nubbin of corn crosswise in her 
throat. She suffered greatly for an hour or 
two, until I ran my hand down her throat 
and pulled the nubbin out. She did not 
say a word, but she looked as thankful as 
any brute you ever saw. I verily believe 
she knew how to be grateful for a favor. I 
saw, or thought I saw, many evidences of 
gratitude — calf gratitude, of course — while 
Dishface was growing up under my care. 


12 


ODD HOURS. 


Kindness is the nearest and best road to 
every thing that has a heart to ^eel. Dish- 
face may not have been endowed with an 
intellect, but then she had a memory and 
sense enough to learn many things other 
cows did not know. She could not talk, 
but she understood more talk than any other 
cow I ever knew. Indeed, I believe the 
animals we use would be more serviceable 
and more pleasurable to us if we used more 
kindness and more care in training them. 
The possibilities of animal culture are not 
appreciated by us as they should be, nor as 
they will be when the religion of Christ has 
full sway in our world. Then will we» be- 
stow some pious care to make the best we 
can out of the animals God has given us for 
our use in this life. 

When Dishface was two years and a half 
old, she had a little calf of her own, and she 
was just as proud of it as she could be ; and 
no wonder, for it was just as much like its 
mother as one black-eyed pea is like anoth- 
er. I think she was glad for the family to 
look at it, though she seemed jealous of 
strangers, and she was greatly annoyed 


DISHFACE. 13 

when a dog came near. It was evident she 
meant to take care of her calf. 

I was as proud of Dishface and her calf 
as boys ever get to be of any thing in this 
life. I made many a big calculation about 
the immense sums I would realize in the 
near future from my cow and calf; and at 
night, when I could not sleep, I built many 
an air-castle with Dishface and her calf for 
a foundation. It is true I never realized a 
cent from my calculations, and my air-cas- 
tles soon tumbled into ruins; but I enjoyed 
making the one and building the other, and 
these plans and thotlghts occupied my mind, 
and helped to keep other and baser thoughts 
away. Everybody knows that what little 
mind a boy has must be usefully employed, 
or it will be uselessly employed, or per- 
haps sinfully employed. If every boy gets 
as much real pleasure out of owning some- 
thing as I did out of owning Dishface and 
her calf, then every boy ought to have 
a title, in fee-simple, to some kind of 
property. 

When Dishface’ s calf was about six 
months old, mother sent me one evening to 


ODD HOURS. 


H 

the cow-pen to milk. It was the rule at our 
house that one of the boys had to milk when 
the weather was bad. This was the last day 
of December, and the weather was cold. 
A slow rain, nearly half sleet, was falling, 
and the wind was from the east. An east 
wind blows no good to man or beast in this 
country. I was not in the best humor that 
evening, and it seemed to me I never saw 
the cows so “contrary’’ before. I put off 
milking Dishface to the last, because she 
was the gentlest cow in the lot, and the easi- 
est one to milk. I was proceeding with her 
finely, and had the half-gallon cup nearly 
brimming full, when suddenly, and with a 
fearful start, she kicked the milk all over 
me, knocked me down, and stepped on me 
as she ran to the lower corner of the lot. I 
must have hurt her in some way, for I had 
never known her to kick before. I did not 
think of this then. I got up, muddy and 
wet, and as “mad as blazes,” and ran 
toward Dishface, where she stood shivering 
in the corner of the lot, and kicked her in 
the flank as hard as I could with the toe of 
my boot. It was a mortal kick. I saw at 


DISHFACE. 


15 

once, from the sufferings of the poor brute, 
that I had killed my own cow in a moment 
of foolish anger. O how my conscience 
hurt me ! I would have given any thing 
and every thing to have undone the evil I 
had done. 

I confessed my sin to mother, who 
helped me to do what we could for the 
poor dumb cow that instinctively looked to 
us for sympathy and help. I built a good 
fire on each side of her, and took the blanket 
off of my own bed and put it over her, and 
watched by her during that long, dark, cold 
night. It was a terrible night to me. The 
watery eyes of that poor cow and her moans 
made blisters all over my heart. I prayed 
for her as I never prayed for a cow before, 
but my prayers could not undo what was 
done. They did, however, give vent to my 
own sorrow and penitence and promises of 
reformation. It was some comfort to be- 
lieve that Dishface forgave me, for she 
looked at me tenderly and trustingly, as 
she had always done, when I tried to help 
her. I believe God forgave me, for he 
sent the witness of pardon into my soul; but 


i6 


ODD HOURS. 


I have not forgiven myself for that deed 
till this day. 

If one who takes the life of a fellow-man 
in anger suffers as much as I did that night 
and for weeks after, then I would not be the 
slayer of my fellow-man for a thousand 
worlds like this. I would rather be killed 
myself than to suffer a hundred deaths for 
killing another man. Wanton tampering 
with life, even the life of dumb brutes, blunts 
the finer feelings of humanity, and makes 
demons incarnate out of men. 

If Dishface had lived, doubtless I would 
have forgotten her before this time ; but she 
died on New-year’s morning just after sun- 
up, and now she is immortal — at least so far 
as I am concerned. She richly deserves an 
immortality of her own, for she never did 
but one wrong thing, and I am confident 
there was no evil intent back of that. The 
devil was in me, I know, when I got up and 
kicked the poor cow, for he has so often 
since then strode up and down the corridors 
of my heart that I know his footfall as soon 
as he steps upon the threshold. In many 
things, if not in most, I have, thank God, 


DISHFACE. 


17 


learned to bang the door in his face before 
he gets fairly inside. This is the only safe 
way. It will not do to let him in. It is 
safer and easier to keep the devil out of our 
hearts than to turn him out after he once 
gets in. 

2 


MT FIRST WILD TURKEY, 


1 KILLED my first wild turkey when I was 
about thirteen years old. It was both 
an event and an era in my young life. 
It happened — I say happened, for it was 
an accident — on this wise : I took my 
gun, a long, single-barrel shotgun, brand- 
ed “London Fine Twist,” one day in the 
month of June, in the year 1852, and start- 
ed on a squirrel-hunt in Coonawawar bot- 
tom. “ Coonawawar” was the Indian name 
of a creek that ran near our home, and the 
meaning of the name was “ Polecat.” The 
creek bottom was a weird, lonesome-look- 
ing place, covered with cane from five to 
ten feet high. There were plenty of wolves, 
wild cats, and a few catamounts in the coun- 
try then. A knowledge of this fact was not 
overly pleasant to a timid boy of my age, 
but the excitement it produced was some- 
thing to stimulate; and then I had my gun, 
and old Ring was along. A better or braver 
( 18 ) 


MY FIRST WILD TURKEY. 


19 

dog was not to be found, so I thought. It 
was Saturday afternoon, and I had been 
plowing hard all the week and was bound 
to have some fun. 

I trudged along down the creek for a 
mile and a half without finding any game. 
The day was warm, and old Ring was too 
lazy to hunt. While slowly hunting my 
way through a large canebrake I came 
suddenly upon the bank of a ‘‘bayou” that 
had nearly dried up from the summer sun. 
Just as I came to the opening, right in front 
of me, and nearly at the muzzle of my gun, 
there rose up to fly five large wild turkeys. 
As quick as thought I raised my gun and 
fired, and down came a large gobbler in the 
bottom of the bayou almost at the spot from 
which he rose. I had squirrel shot in my 
gun, but the range was so short that they 
took full effect upon his gobblership. 

I threw down my gun and jumped upon 
the gobbler, fearing he might get away. He 
whipped me with his wings and scratched me 
with his feet at a fearful rate, but I got out my 
knife and cut his throat from ear to ear. I 
think it was the proudest moment of my 


20 


ODD HOURS. 


life. As soon as I saw he was dead I took 
him by the legs and swung him across my 
shoulder, and made a break for home. I 
wanted mother to see what I had done. I 
don’t think I had a dry thread on me when 
I got home. When I came near the house, 
I began to call mother at the top of my voice, 
and she came out to see what was the mat- 
ter. I walked up to the gate as proud as 
Julius Caesar, and threw down the gobbler 
and said: “ See that. Don’t you call that 
fine for a boy?” 

“Yes,” said mother, rather slowly, with 
a peculiar twinkle; “but, my son, where is 
your gun ? ’ ’ 

I was thunderstruck, for that was the first 
time I had thought of it. “There ! ” said I ; 
“ I left it a mile and a half from here, right 
where I killed this gobbler.” 

“ Bring in the gobbler,” said mother, 
“and rest a bit, and then go back and get 
your gun. Next time you will not be so 
excited.” 

The mistake I made by leaving my gun 
marred all the fun of killing that gobbler. 
The story got out on me, and everywhere I 


MY FIRST WILD TURKEY. 


21 


went some one said to me : “ O yes ! you are 
the boy that killed the gobbler and left his 
gun." 

When a boy chances to do a really smart 
thing, he nearly always does some foolish 
thing that spoils the whole of it — or at least 
I did when I was a boy. 


TRAINING A DOG TO HUNT 
COONS. 


G oon-hunting was common when Bud 
and I were boys. The country was 
new then, and game was plentiful. 
Coons were abundant, and very destruc- 
tive in roasting-ear time. They would 
break down the stalks, and destroy the corn 
from fifty to one hundred yards from the 
fence on the exposed sides of the farm. 
They were particularly bad on the bottom 
lands, and near the wide swamps. 

One or more good coon-dogs were con- 
sidered necessary on every farm. Some of 
these dogs were well trained and of great 
value. I knew one dog, when I was a boy, 
that would go coon-hunting by himself when 
ordered to do so by his master. His owner, 
Mr. Fuqua, would go out before day every 
morning in roastin^-ear time, and start 
Bruno around the farm. He would make 
the circuit of the field if he did not start 
( 22 ) 


TRAINING A DOG TO HUNT COONS. 23 

and tree a coon before he completed the 
round. 

The tone of his voice indicated the state 
of the chase. If the trail was cold, he 
opened slowly, in a long tone ; when the 
trail grew warm, he opened more rapidly, 
with a sharp, quick bark. When the coon 
was treed, Bruno said so in a peculiar way, 
well known to his master. The unerring 
rifle and a sharp ax were all the weapons 
Mr. Fuqua needed. The coon was most 
generally found sitting in the fork of a 
large gum-tree, or lying on the limb of a 
grand old white oak. The fatal ball gen- 
erally brought him to the ground at the 
crack of the trusted rifle. Bruno always 
made sure work of the coon by crushing 
in his ribs over the region of the heart. 

Sometimes the coon took refuge in a hol- 
low log or in a hollow tree. In such cases 
the sharp ax, in the hands of this sturdy 
son of toil, soon opened a way to his coon- 
ship. As soon as Bruno could get hold of 
his hide he pulled the coon into daylight, 
and then the fight began. A full-grown 
male coon is a good match for most dogs. 


ODD HOURS. 


24 

Whatever else may or may not be said of 
coons, they are good fighters. They are 
strong, full of pluck, gifted in grit, and they 
have long, sharp teeth and strong jaws. Fur 
and hair and blood fly when a dog and a coon 
fight. If the coon gets the dog by the lip, 
as he is almost sure to do, the dog begs 
piteously. A trained dog picks his chance 
and grabs the coon by the back just behind 
his shoulders, and presses him to the ground 
and crushes the life out of him before he 
turns him loose. This is the only safe 
way. 

There is all the difference in the world 
between a trained and an untrained dog in 
a coon-fight. The trained dog goes into it 
in a business way, slow but sure ; while an 
untrained dog hurries into the fight, only to 
wish for some one to help him loose from 
the savage coon. 

Bud and I owned between us a large, fat 
cur pup, about fully grown; and we were 
exceedingly anxious to train him to hunt 
coons. His name was Nero. Mr. Fuqua 
was a near neighbor of ours, and he asked 
us to go coon-hunting with him, and train 


TRAINING A DOG TO HUNT COONS 25 

our dog. Nero knew no more about trail- 
ing a coon than if he had been a calf. He 
ran and frisked and jumped here and there, 
hindering more than he helped. Bud and 
I knew but little of coon-hunting ourselves ; 
but we were not proud of Nero’s perform- 
ance on the trail, and we apologized for 
him as best we could. His age and his lack 
of experience were our main pleas. 

Mr. Fuqua generously accepted the apol- 
ogy, and praised our dog for his energy. It 
was misdirected energy, it is true, but it 
showed a willing mind; and that is much, 
even in a dog. 

Old Bruno stuck to the trail, with a steady 
yelp, taking all the tucks and turns, till at 
last he began to bay the coon in a large 
sweet-gum log. 

This was exactly right. It would give us 
a chance to put Nero into the fight. We 
knew he would be equal to that emergency. 
He had whipped two pointer dogs a few 
days before; and then, too, although so 
young, he was fully one-third larger than 
Bruno, a hound; and, besides all this, cur 
dogs are better fighters than hounds. Mr. 


26 


ODD HOURS. 


Fuqua was noble enough to agree to all 
this, and he promised to hold Bruno off, 
and allow Nero a chance to show himself 
in a coon-fight. 

All this arranged, Mr. Fuqua determined 
where the coon was in the long log, and be- 
gan chopping a hole into it. He soon cut 
out a large joggle, but fell short of the loca- 
tion of the coon by a foot and a half or two 
feet. A good whiff of the coon put Nero 
in a great rage, and Bud and I were glori- 
ous over the capers he cut. 

Mr. Fuqua split the end of a stick and 
twisted it into the fur of the coon, and told 
me to haul him out where Nero could get at 
him, while he held old Bruno. That was 
one of the proudest moments of my life, 
for I thought my dog would cover himself 
with glory in a few moments. His eyes 
glared, and his hair stood on end, and he 
was furious, for the fray. I was trembling 
from head to foot, and with one strong pull 
I landed the coon in a clear plac^, and Nero 
nabbed him quicker than thought. Bud 
and I climbed upon the log where we could 
get a clear view of the fight. About the 


TRAINING A DOG TO HUNT COONS. 2*] 

second pass the coon, an extra large one, 
took Nero by the upper lip and held on to 
him with a sort of death-grip, while the poor 
dog set up a most unearthly howl, clamping 
his tail tight between his legs. 

“Boys, Fm sorry, but he’s whipped,” 
said Mr. Fuqua, half sorrowfully, half hu- 
morously. 

“Sic him! sic him! sic him!” squalled 
Bud and I furiously ; but it was no use. Our 
poor dog squatted down before the coon as 
limp as a dish-rag, and whined mournfully. 
How long it lasted I dare not say, but when 
the coon turned Nero loose he tucked his 
tail and struck a bee-line for home, as if 
there had been a pack of burning fire-crack- 
ers tied to his tail. 

Mr. Fuqua turned Bruno loose, and he 
dispatched that coon in a minute and a half. 

Bud and I were worse whipped than Nero 
was. If we had not bragged on him so 
much, it would not have hurt us half so bad. 

Now, boys, don’t brag, don’t puff, don’t 
blow; particularly on a young, untrained 
dog. He may disappoint you when the tug 
comes. 


JOE BOWERS. 


J OE Bowers was a “mighty hunter 
in the early days, when the coun- 
try was new and game plentiful. His 
favorite sport was deer-hunting. He loved 
the excitement of the chase after deer with 
a good pack of hounds when the weather 
was fair and the deer in fine condition. In- 
deed, the temptation to hunt was so strong 
that it interfered seriously with Joe’s farm- 
ing affairs. No matter how important it was 
for the plow to move, Joe availed himself 
of every opportunity to go “driving.” It 
seemed that he did not know, or knowing 
did not care, that the grass continued to 
grow while he was following the hounds. 
Joe Bowers was a good hand to drive. He 
knew the haunts of the deer, the drives, and 
the good stands in all the region of country 
where he lived, and in every direction for 
twenty miles from his home. He was a 
good woodman, and was perfectly at home 
( 28 ) 


JOE BOWERS. 


29 


in the wildest region that could be found. 
No man in all the land possessed a larger 
fund of huntsman’s stories than Joe Bow- 
ers. He could tell them for hours at a time 
with increasing interest, at least to himself, 
from first to last. Joe talked of little else ; 
indeed, he knew little else to talk about. In 
his way he was an entertaining man, and 
hence a good companion for one who loved 
hunting or enjoyed stories on that line. 
When Joe was in a meditative mood, and had 
no one to make a drive with him, he would 
take his , gun and stroll for hours in the 
woods and along the hummocks, “still- 
hunting; ” and many a deer fell before his 
unerring rifle when wholly unconscious of 
danger. Mrs. Bowers (a model woman, 
richly deserving a better fate) and her chil- 
dren nearly always had meat and to spare, 
no matter how scarce the bread might be. 
Meat was good enough for Joe, provided he 
had killed it with his own gun. Mrs. Bow- 
ers called her husband Joseph with an in- 
tonation indicating the greatest affection and 
respect. A happier couple could not be 
found in the Tallibonela country than Joe 


30 


ODD HOURS. 


Bowers and his wife, Mary Jane. The wife 
seemed to be as proud of her husband and 
his reputation as a mighty hunter as she 
would have been had he been Governor of 
the State. Joe was a good fellow any way 
you took him, kind to . everybody he met, 
and exceedingly tender to Mary Jane and 
the children. An affectionate husband is 
generally almost adored by his wife, no mat- 
ter how worthless he may be. The last 
phrase of this remark is not intended to ap- 
ply to Joe Bowers, for he was far from be- 
ing a worthless man. A better provider of 
meat for his family was not to be found in 
the limits of the Chickasaw Nation. 

F or many years J oe was generally at home 
with Mary Jane and the children when night 
came on. He did not like to leave them 
alone at night. If the distance of a drive 
from home was likely to keep him away for 
a night or two, he always tried to procure 
company for Mary Jane. If no other com- 
pany could be found, he got an Indian girl 
living with a family of Indians that refused 
to go West when the tribe went away. Un- 
fortunately for the comfort of Mrs. Bowers 


JOE BOWERS. 


31 


and her children, Joe gradually developed a 
■great passion for “fire-hunting” at night. 
His pan and torch were almost constantly in 
use when the weather would permit. Suc- 
cessful fire-hunting requires two men, or at 
least one man and a boy to carry the gun. 
The outfit is simple enough : a long-handled 
pan, plenty of lightwood, and a good gun. 
The man in front carries the pan, in which 
a good light is blazing, and keeps a sharp 
lookout for a pair of eyes. When he 
“shines” these, if close enough to shoot, 
he stops and noiselessly gives the pan to the 
man following him, and takes the gun, and, 
after careful aim, shoots, and down comes 
the deer, or, as frequently happens, a horse 
or a cow. In rare instances hunters have 
been known to wander around and shoot 
their own horses, left tied in the woods. 
Joe Bowers did this once before he was fully 
versed in all the secrets of fire-hunting. Old 
hunters say the horse and cow bat their eyes 
when looking at a light at night, but the 
deer does not. They also say a deer’s eyes 
will shine for several hours after it is dead. 
This last fact Joe Bowers learned by expe- 


32 


ODD HOURS. 


rience when a practical joke was played 
upon him by hunters older than himseK. 
He had learned to fire-hunt by himself, car- 
rying his own pan and gun. On one occa- 
sion Joe Bowers was making a bee-line for 
the big prairie, with a full head of light in 
his pan. Mr. Cook and Mr. Kilpatrick had 
reached the prairie before Joe got there, and 
had killed a fine buck, and were ready to 
go home, when they saw Joe’s light coming. 
Instantly they stamped out their light, and 
cut off the buck’s head, and stuck it upon a 
pole near the trail, and about the proper 
height from the ground. Joe was just emerg- 
ing from the timber on the edge of the prai- 
rie, more than a mile distant. Slowly he 
wound his way along the narrow trail through 
the tall grass v/ith which the prairie was cov- 
ered. Pretty soon he shined the buck’s 
eyes, and stopped and squared himself to 
shoot. This time he carried a brand-new 
double-barrel shotgun, a new purchase, of 
which Joe was just as proud as any good 
man ought to be of any thing. The silence 
was awful for an instant, when bang ! went 
Joe’s gun, resounding like a four-pounder 


JOE BOWERS. 


33 


far and wide over the prairie. When the 
smoke cleared away, Joe looked, and there 
stood his deer, its head as, high and its eyes 
as bright as ever. Joe squared himself for 
the second shot, took still more careful aim, 
and let fly the second load. When the 
smoke lifted, there stood the buck gazing 
at him as intently as before. Hurriedly, 
and somewhat tremulously, he rammed a 
fresh charge down both barrels of his new 
gun, carefully counting in fifteen buckshot 
to each barrel. The operation of loading 
did not in the least change the steady gaze 
of the* deer that stood before him. Joe cau- 
tiously moved eight or ten paces nearer, 
fearing he might be too far off for a shot- 
gun. “The third time is the charm,” 
thought Joe, as he brought his gun to his 
face, determined to plant the whole load be- 
tween the buck’s eyes. He shot, but there 
stood the deer, dauntless as if he had not 
shot at all. Joe was whipped, and said 
audibly, in a tone that spread far and wide 
on the still night air: “Look here, there is 
something wrong about this thing! ” Cook 
and Kilpatrick could hold in no longer, and 
3 


ODD HOURS. 


34 

fairly roared with laughter, until Joe brought 
down his gun and said: “Look here, boys, 
this is too bad on an old hunter with a new 
gun; and if it wasn’t for Mary Jane and the 
children, I’d blow a hole through you and 
move West ! ” 

After this Joe knew, or thought he knew, 
a deer’s eyes could be shined after it was 
dead. Joe Bowers quietly sleeps beneath 
the sod, waiting for the trump that shall 
wake the nations of the dead; but Cook and 
Kilpatrick, neither of them old men, still 
laugh over the shooting of Joe Bowers at 
the head of a dead deer. 


“NOVEMBERS 


“ X Tovember was so named because he 
/\\ first saw the light in the eleventh 
1 \ month of our year. This month is 

the season of the brown and yellow leaf in 
Mississippi, though the November of whom 
we write was as black as negroes ever get 
to be. 

He was tall, broad-shouldered, square- 
built, muscular, weighing nearly two hun- 
dred pounds, without a superfluous pound 
of flesh on his frame, and a perfect Hercu- 
les in strength. He had the characteristics 
of his race — receding forehead, flat nose, 
thick lips, pearly-white teeth, and a foot 
that made a track like that of an elephant. 
November’s voice was one of wonderful 
compass and power, but always as mellow 
and sweet as the notes of a silver trumpet. 
He loved to sing : his whole soul seemed to 
be attuned to song. The songs of Zion, 
particularly those found in the Methodist 

( 35 ) 


ODD HOURS. 


3 <^ 

Hymn-book, were his delight. He sung 
them at home and abroad, in the field and 
in the woods, and the public highways 
where he went were made vocal with the 
praise of God. Many a time my boyish 
heart has grown tender under his singing, 
and then again I’ve been lifted close to God 
when he sung “In the sweet fields of Eden” 
with melting tenderness. 

November was a good man — a man of 
deep piety, of unsullied Christian character 
— one in whom everybody who knew him 
had unbounded confidence. He was an 
honor to his race, and would have been an 
honor to any race in any age of the world. 
In first one way and then another he had 
learned how to read, and the New Testa- 
ment, the Methodist Hymn-book and Disci- 
pline were the limits of his ambition along 
that line.- He was a slave, but God’s free- 
man in the truest and highest sense of that 
word. 

His master trusted him with any thing and 
every thing, and he never violated the con- 
fidence reposed in him. November was ex- 
ceedingly modest, never putting himself for- 


NOVEMBER. 


37 


(( 


>> 


ward; indeed, he seemed to be humbled by 
the consideration shown him in the com- 
munity where he lived. All the people, 
white and black, young and old, saint and 
sinner, had confidence in November: they 
believed him to be a holy man of God. He 
used better language than the average run 
of his race, but even then he murdered the 
“king’s English” wofully sometimes. 

November was a member of old Smyrna 
Church, then on the Pontotoc Circuit, in the 
Memphis Conference. The negroes were 
served by a missionary, a white preacher, 
himself an owner of slaves, but a polished 
shaft for God in leading the black people to 
Christ. The negroes and the white people 
worshiped in the same house, as was cus- 
tomary in slave times all over the South — 
the white people in the morning, and the ne- 
groes in the afternoon. November was class- 
leader among his people, and a better leader 
no class ever had. He watched over his 
class, and led them as one who expected to 
give an account of every soul at the bar of 
God. November and a number of the ne- 
groes always attended the preaching-service 


ODD HOURS. 


38 ■ 

for the whites, and occupied one or two 
seats in the rear end of the church; and 
fully as many white people attended the 
service for the negroes, sitting on seats in 
the back of the house where the negroes 
sat in the morning. This was the custom 
of the country then. 

November was a perfect giant in prayer. 
He laid hold on God and pleaded with an 
unction and earnestness that seemed to be 
absolutely irresistible. His language was so 
simple, so child-likc. He talked to God as 
friend to friend. Every word was prayer — 
confession, intercession, thanksgiving, and 
an array of the divine promises that kindled 
faith and love in every heart that longed 
after God. Heaven and earth seemed to 
touch and mingle into one when November 
besieged the throne of grace. I never 
knew any other man, white or black, who 
had more power with God in prayer. I 
verily believe God delighted in the pleadings 
of this honest-hearted black man. The an- 
swers were so many, and came so often and 
so quick, that it grew into a proverb that 
November got whatever he asked for. 


NOVEMBER. 


( ( 


> i 


39 


While yet a boy in my teens, struggling 
with a call to the ministry, I sought the 
counsel of this negro. I found him in the 
edge of a swamp, where he was splitting 
rails. When I came within hearing, he was 
singing “Jesus, I my cross have taken,” in 
soft, sweet notes that melted right down 
into my heart. He sat down upon the log, 
and with reverent and bowed head listened 
while I opened my whole heart to him and 
told him my tale of sorrow and of the cross 
that had been laid upon me. When I had 
finished, he said, “ Let us pray,” and down 
we knelt at the log. November laid his 
hand upon my head, and in low, sweet tones 
told the agony of my heart over to God in 
such a way as I hacj never thought of before, 
and then pleaded with God for light and 
help until the very air seemed alive with the 
divine presence and blessing. My whole 
soul was filled to bursting with the Spirit of 
God. My doubts and fears were all gone, 
and joy and gladness filled my heart. 

November was killed in an instant soon 
after this, and went up to God. 

When I get home, I want to find Novem- 


40 ODD HOURS. 

ber and tell him what a debt I owe him in 
the name of my blessed Lord. I saw in 
him as I never saw in any other man the 
simplicity and power of the gospel of Christ. 
The more he prayed and the oftener and 
fuller he was answered, the humbler he^ 
grew. 


JVOPF, BOYS, DON’T. 


on’t swear. Don’t use by-words. 



Don’t say “I’ll be hanged,” “I’ll 


JLy be switched,” “I’ll bet,” “I wish I 
may die,” or “I’ll give you my ears if it 
an’t so.” All these expressions partake 
of the nature of swearing; indeed, they 
are swearing, but not profane swearing. 
“Swear not at all,” says Christ. 

Don’t chew tobacco, don’t smoke. These 
are useless, filthy, expensive, and unhealthy 
habits. Chewing and smoking will not make 
a man of you ; in fact, you will not be a real, 
true man while you are the slave of any habit. 

Don’t drink whisky, brandy, or wine. 
These will ruin you for this world and the 
world to come. Don’t get in the habit of 
drinking, not even sweet cider, in public 
drinking-places. These apparently inno- 
cent things have been the entering wedge 
to the ruin of many poor, drunken sots. 
“Abstain from all appearance of evil.” 


( 41 ) 


42 


ODD HOURS. 


Don’t tell lies, not even for fun. Don’t 
prevaricate, don’t evade the truth, even 
if the truth hurts you. Be open, be truth- 
ful. Truthfulness is the chief corner-stone 
of character. No matter what a man is nor 
how great he is, if he is not truthful he is 
not reliable. Remember, “all liars shall 
have their part in the lake that burns with 
fire and brimstone.” . 

Don’t use ugly words. Never allow a 
word to escape your lips that might not be 
used in the presence of your mother and 
sister. Words are the signs of ideas, and 
if you use bad signs you are sure to have 
bad thoughts, and bad thoughts are sinful. 
“Let no sinful communication proceed out 
of your mouth.” 

Don’t loiter about taverns, saloons, and 
gambling-dens. Don’t stay to hear an ob- 
scene story or ribald jest. Don’t lounge 
around on the streets in bad company after 
dark. Avoid the “counsel of the ungod- 
ly.” “Shun the way of the sinners,” and 
never, no never, “sit in the seat of the 
scorner.” Fly from evil things and evil as- 
sociates. Go home to your mother, keep 


NOW, BOYS, don’t. 


43 


company with your sisters, or go to see 
your sweetheart — she is a nice girl, I know; 
and I must confess that I have but little 
hope of a boy who has no sweetheart. 

Never joke at the expense of religion and 
sacred things. Things sacred will not re- 
main so long when lightly handled. Al- 
ways be reverent in church, even if you can- 
not be devout. Don’t profane the house 
and service of God by irreverent conduct. 
All profanity is an offense, and a grave one, 
against God. God has a most jealous re- 
gard for his own name, character, house, 
and worship. He cannot — merciful as he 
is, he cannot — hold a profane person guilt- 
less or free from sin. Now, boys, don’t for- 
get these things. 


SISTER FINLEY^ S SCRIPTURE, 


O LD Sister Finley was a character. 
She was a wise woman without ed- 
ucation, and sensible without culti- 
vation. She had been a diligent student of 
human nature, and knew what was in men. 
As to books she knew but little, not being 
able to read without spelling letter by letter 
more than half the words. Her convictions 
were positive, and she was not afraid to ex- 
press them. Behind a rough exterior she 
had a kindly heart. Her aim was to do 
good unto all men. When she rebuked sin, 
she was always severe on the sinner; indeed, 
she was too direct and personal to reprove 
sin in a general way. She told men plain- 
ly and pointedly what she thought wrong 
in them. Neither age nor position spared 
those with whom she came in contact. 

The dear old soul was always brave 
enough in what she did, but at times she was 
wanting in that sweetness of manner that 
( 44 ) 


SISTER Finley’s scripture. 45 

should always characterize a child of God. 
We loved the old woman and visited her oft- 
en. She was not a member of our Cnurch; 
but this mattered not, as we could not miss 
the inspiration of such a woman as she was. 

She knew God, and had an experience; 
and out of this had grown a character not 
only symmetrical, but one that was strong 
and true. Weak people could lean against 
Sister Finley and feel the support of a strong 
stake. She was not easily shaken by ordi- 
nary gusts of wind. We often differed in 
our opinions — in fact, the real strong points 
in the old lady’s character were not brought 
out until some mooted question was sprung, 
and then she was at her best. 

She was familiar, in her way, with the 
leading doctrines of the Presbyterian 
Church, of which she was a member, and 
she never wearied discussing the differences 
between Calvinism and Arminianism. To 
her mind Calvinism was truth concentrated, 
while Arminianism was the embodiment of 
all dangerous and damnable errors. We 
loved to hear the old lady talk, and always 
sprung some question suited to her taste. 


ODD HOURS. 


46 

There was an independence and originality 
in her way of thinking and her modes of ex- 
pression that suited our taste exactly. She 
had in her mind a full and fair outline of 
scriptural truth, but, like many better in- 
formed people, had mixed up with the word 
of God quotations from the poets and com- 
mon proverbs. All these were holy script- 
ure to her. When we assured her, as we 
often did, that such and such things were 
not in the Bible, she would say: “ Well, my 
son, if they are not in thar, they had ought 
ter be. In fact, I don’t know whether you 
Methodist preachers know what is in the 
Bible or not. I will ax Brother Cooper, my 
pastor, an’ ef he says it is not in thar, why 
then I’ll know it is not. I am afeerd this is 
one of your x\rrninian tricks. You Method- 
ist preachers would deceive the very elect 
of God if you could.” 

It may not be out of place to mention a 
few of the passages the old lady thought 
were in the Bible. We have heard some of 
them quoted as proof-texts from the pulpit. 
Once when the good old woman was suffer- 
ing from rheumatism, she consoled herself 


SISTER Finley’s scripture. 47 

by saying: “ Isah says, ‘The Lord temper- 
eth the wind to the shorn lamb.’ ” “No, 
Sister Finley,” we said, “that is not in the 
Bible, for the Lord often puts the closest 
shorn lamb in the bleakest corner.” But 
this was left over for Brother Cooper to 
settle. 

What a responsibility rests upon pastors 
in the care of some souls ! 

Another time, when the old woman was 
lamenting the proneness of her heart to sin, 
she said; “Job says, ‘We are prone to sin 
as the sparks are to fly upward.’ ” “Job 
never said anything of the kind, my sister; 
he said, ‘We are born unto trouble as the 
sparks are to fly upward.’ We have trouble 
by a necessary law, but we are not bound 
to sin as by an unchangeable law. The 
sparks fly upward because they cannot help 
it, but we can keep from sin.” This quo- 
tation was laid over for future settlement. 

The good woman had one son who was a 
little wild, and when apologizing for his 
wayward course, she said: “You know 
Paul says, ‘When we are in Rome we must 
do as Rome does.’” We replied; “No, 


ODD HOURS. 


48 

grandma, Paul never said that, nor any 
thing like it, for when he was in Rome he 
did just what Christ wanted him to do, with- 
out reference to the sinful ways of the Ro- 
mans.” She would not be convinced; for 
what is firmness in some people is pure stub- 
bornness in others. The more ignorant 
people are, the more stubborn they gener- 
ally are, and also the more boastful of great 
firmness. 

One long, rainy day, w^hen we were hav- 
ing a high discussion on the doctrine of 
“Final Perseverance,” the case of Judas 
came up for review. The old lad}^ at last 
closed down upon me with this quotation, 
which she averred to the last was in the 
lids of the New Testament: “Judas was a 
devil from the beginning.” She seemed to 
be trumped when I asked her, “From what 
beginning?” “ Fve heern Brother Cooper 
quote that text often,” she said. We knew 
Brother Cooper, and did not believe he had 
ever made such a quotation as from the 
word of God, but, he may have done so. 
The old woman got a little riled over my 
denial of that passage, and said: “Yes, 


SISTER Finley’s scripture. 


49 

yer think yerseK mighty smart about what 
is in the Bible, but you know Solomon says, 
‘ He that bloweth not his own horn his horn 
shall not be blown.’ ” We did not know 
that, never having seen it in the wise man’s 
writings, but we deemed it best not to dis- 
pute that quotation just then. 

One Sunday afternoon the old lady was 
lamenting, as old women often do, the de- 
generacy of the present times, and the want 
of proper training for children, such as was 
practiced when she was growing up. She 
said: “All this comes of not obeyin’ the 
word of God, for you know, my brother, 
Solomon says, ‘ Spar the rod and spile the 
child.’” “No,” we said, “Solomon did 
not say that; there is nothing like it in the 
Bible.” This brought the old woman out 
in full force. “ Look here, Mr. Methodist, 
the way you are goin’ on you will spile the 
whole Bible. Now, sir, Solomon did say 
that ar’ very thing; ef he didn’t, he ought 
to have said it. It is as true as preaching, 
anyhow. The way you Methodists are go- 
in’ on will ruin this country. Your Armin- 
ian doctrine about ther posserbility of ’pos- 
4 


ODD HOURS. 


50 

tasy and total depravity have well-nigh 
ruined the young folks and the old ones 
too. Why, sir, even Brother Cooper is 
afeerd to preach good old Calvinism as he 
used to. Ef you just teach these children 
that Solomon didn’t say ‘ spar the rod and 
spile the child,’ they will all go to ruin. 
That very passage of Scripture was the rea- 
son of my whippin’ my ten children as much 
as I did, and if you take them as a lot whar 
will you find a better set in all this here land ? 
Ef people believed that passage and prac- 
ticed upon it, you would not see so many 
bad children as you do now. Folks have 
got too smart of late years any way. Some 
of them thinks they know more than their 
Maker do. The old time way of razin’ 
children was mighty rigid, I confess, but it 
made a heap better men and women than 
are growin’ up now; and you know, Mr. 
Methodist, that Paul says, ‘ The proof of the 
pudding is in the chawing of the bag ! ’ 
Now, sir, deny that, will you? ” We deemed 
it prudent to adjourn the discussion to a 
more favorable season, and give dear old 
grandma time to cool down. 


sistp:r p'int.ey’s scripture. 51 

When this good woman came to die, she 
passed away in great triumph, blessing ev- 
erybody who came about her in the name 
of the Lord Jesus 


“ UNCLE DICKE 


NCLE Dick’’ is a character any 



way you take him. He has about 


as many good points as any man I 


know. He is not an educated man, but 
then he is a wise man. He got most of his 
learning in the school of experience, and he 
has no thought of graduating while he lives. 
The course is an endless one. 

Uncle Dick can see through a man 
about as soon as he lays his eyes on him. 
He says, “The best study of man is men.” 
Now and then he gets “ picked up,” as the 
saying goes, but not often. If any man 
“gets ahead of him” in a trade, or any 
business transaction, he says: “Well, that 
is another wrinkle on my horn.” The 
number of wrinkles on a cow’s horn is said 
to be the surest index to her age. Judging 
by this figure of speech. Uncle Dick is 
well up in years, though he claims to be 
only a young man. In knowledge of men, 


( 52 ) 



UNCLE DICK. 


6i 


> > 


53 


and in the number of years he has lived in 
this world, he is an old* man; but he has a 
young heart, a mischievous disposition, and 
he is constantly trying to play a prank on 
some one. 

Some years ago, just after one of the 
General Conferences of the Southern 
Methodist Church, his pastor, a young man, 
offered him a new Discipline. 

Uncle Dick is a thorough Methodist, 
dyed in both warp and filling. He takes 
the papers and buys the Disciplines: first, 
because he loves to read them ; and second- 
ly, because they are the papers and books 
of his Church. 

The catalogue price of Disciplines then 
was fifty cents, though the books had cost 
the pastor only thirty-nine and three-quar- 
ters cents each. 

Uncle Dick always has an eye to bus- 
iness. “Business is business” is a great 
motto with him. 

“Now,” said he, “I’ll tell you what I 
will do: I’ll give you forty cents in silver 
for a Discipline.” 

“Good,” said the pastor, “I’ll take it.” 


54 


ODD HOURS. 


Silver was silver at that time. There was 
little of it in circulation. The sight of a 
dime was good for sore eyes. It was at a 
premium all over the land, both North and 
South. 

Uncle Dick searched every drawer and 
till in his safe and store, and finally found 
forty cents in silver and paid it to his pas- 
tor for a Discipline, and said to several of 
the stewards present: “ Gentlemen, you see, 
business is business, and it is just as impor- 
tant to save money as it is to make it; and, 
you see, I have saved about seven cents or 
more in this transaction.’’ 

The other official members present said: 
“Pastor, we will give you forty cents in 
greenback for our Discipline.” 

“Good,” said the pastor, “I’ll take it. 
I want my money back, and the books 
didn’t cost me forty cents each.” 

All bought the books at forty cents in 
greenback, and then turned the laugh on 
Uncle Dick about paying for his book in 
silver. 

The old man complained fearfully. Said 
he had been swindled by his pastor, that 


“ UNCLE DICK.' ’ 


55 


this transaction had added another wrinkle, 
and many other things on the same line. 
He kept up these complaints for a month or 
more, telling his friends and the friends of 
the preacher how his pastor had swindled 
him. He even wrote to some mutual friends 
of himself and pastor about it. 

Finally he said to his pastor; “Look 
here, .you swindled me out. of that dime, and 
I can’t get it back from you, and, as busi- 
siness is business, I am going to your house 
for supper to-night, and Fll eat the worth of 
that dime sure.” 

“Well, Uncle Dick,” said the pastor, 
“come along; you are welcome to all you 
can get.” 

The pastor sent word to his wife that 
Uncle Dick and one or two other friends 
would be up to tea. Uncle Dick sent word 
to his wife that he would not be home for 
supper, as he would take tea with his pastor 
that night. 

The pastor’s wife was doing her own 
work, cooking and all. This Uncle Dick’s 
wife knew, and she knew the pastor’s wife 
was not very well, so she set her servants 


ODD HOURS. 


S6 

to work and prepared an elegant meal and 
sent it around to the pastor’s house, steaming 
hot, just in time for supper. 

Of course the pastor’s wife had gone to 
work and cooked the best supper she could 
out of her scant larder. 

When the two meals were spread togeth- 
er on the small table, they presented the 
opulence of a prince. 

One of Uncle Dick’s good points was that 
he was a good eater — a point highly appre- 
ciated by all good housewives, particularly 
so by those who do their own cooking. 

Uncle Dick was at his best that time. He 
took it leisurely along, eating and talking, 
for a half-hour or more. He gave the pas- 
tor’s wife a minute account of the transac- 
tion with her husband, and he expanded 
upon the rascality of it. He was sorry in- 
deed that such an elegant lady as she had 
married such a man. He did not know and 
could not understand how a preacher on an 
eight-hundred-dollar salary could afford to 
keep such a table as that; but he supposed 
it was by swindling people. 

“Now,” said he, “my dear sister, busi- 


UNCLE DICK. 


(( 




57 


ness is business, and I never allow a man 
to get ahead of me in a business transac- 
tion, and I have come up here to-night to 
see you, and to tell you what sort of a man 
your husband is, and to eat the worth of 
that dime.” 

Uncle Dick continued to eat and to com- 
pliment the supper long after the others had 
pushed back their plates. At last he came 
to a pause, and, turning a quizzical glance 
upon his pastor, said: “Business is busi- 
ness, young man. You thought yourself 
mighty sharp when you swindled me out of 
that dime; but, sir, I am even with you 
now, and ahead too, for I have eaten fully 
a dollar’s worth. 

The pastor, looking as stern as he could, 
and speaking as if a little vexed, said: “Un- 
cle Dick, I have heard enough of this. I am 
getting tired of it, and I want it to stop right 
here. Now, sir, I want to know if you are 
perfectly satisfied?” 

“ Yes, sir; I am,” said Uncle Dick, pat- 
ting himself with an air of satisfaction. 

“Well,” said the pastor, “ I am too, for 
you have been eating your own supper. 


58 ODD HOURS. 

Your wife cooked it and sent it around for 
you to eat.” 

The company sent up roar after roar of 
laughter, and poor old Uncle Dick took 
the “dry grins” and said never a word, 
only this: “Gentlemen, this makes me say 
what I do say; business is business, and I 
call this business.” 

Uncle Dick never mentioned that dime 
again. 



‘^OLDyiM:\ 

“ Jim’’ was an educated horse. 

J • I He got his learning in the school 
of experience, one of the most re- 
liable schools in the world. He was a large, 
dark-bay horse, with Roman nose and 
brown eyes. He was made out of good 
material, and he had a good bottom, and he 
was as tough as rawhide. 

A better horse in some respects was nev- 
er made, and in other respects he was as 
mean and as contrary as horses ever get to 
be. He was a self-willed fellow, like many 
boys, and wanted to have his own way. He 
knew a great deal for a horse, and some- 
times he knew too much, or thought he 
knew it. In this particular Old Jim was 
very human, a regular-built boy, and often 
we had to “take him down a button-hole 
or two,” as mother and other old people 
called it then. When Old Jim took a no- 
tion to do or not to do a certain thing, he was 

( 59 ) 


6o 


ODD HOURS. 


hard to convince. Reason and argument 
were worth little or nothing, and as for per- 
suasion, he thought it child’s play. He 
yielded to nothing but force, and a good 
hickory convinced him sooner than any 
thing else. I suppose his early training had 
been bad, or he would have been a better 
horse when he was old. 

I never knew him until he was fourteen 
years old, which is an old age for a horse. 
If I had known more of the mistakes and 
errors of his early training, I could have 
better understood the sins of his mature life 
and the infirmities of his old age. 

I infer that his training had been bad, be- 
cause I see the same effects now from bad 
training in the boys, mature men, and the 
old men I meet. It is difficult to correct 
an error in the early training of a horse or 
a boy. It will not wash out nor wear out. 
It sticks like an indelible stain. 

When Old Jim was young he had been 
a “stage-horse” on the line from Aberdeen 
to Oxford, Miss. His drivers were rough 
men, some of them dissipated men, and all 
of them profane men. Not one of them 


6i 


“ OLD JIM.” 

had any care for a horse, only the service 
there was in him. Few people know, or 
even think, that there is more service in a 
well-kept, kindly treated horse than there 
is in a poor horse subject to hard treat- 
ment. This remark applies to men and 
boys as well as to horses. 

One night'when the driver was drunk and 
there were no passengers afboard, the horses 
ran away with the stage, and Old Jim 
fell through a bridge and broke his right 
hind leg just above the knee-joint. This at 
first seemed to be a misfortune, but it turned 
out to be a good providence to the horse, 
for he fell into good hands and got better 
treatment the rest of his life. And so it 
often is to man : what at first appears to be 
a curse is only a blessing in disguise. 

Old Jim ever after that had a lame 
leg, almost as crooked as an ox-bow. It 
injured his looks and made him unpleasant 
for the saddle, but he could do as much 
hard work as any horse I ever saw. In 
plowing young corn and cotton Old Jim’s 
lame leg would rake the tender stalks down 
at a fearful rate. He was not to blame for 


62 


ODD HOURS. 


that, though I gave him many a whipping 
for it when I ought to have been whipped 
myself, and I VN^ould have been if mother 
had known of my cruelty to the horse. 

Mother bought Old Jim for me to plow. 
His qualities were so good, a regular family 
horse, just suited to a widow and her chil- 
dren, and “only eight years old the next 
spring,” so the fellow said from whom 
mother bought him. Now all of Old Jim’s 
good qualities were good, and in all the 
good things he was suited to a widow and 
her children; but there were in Old Jim 
many things which the man did not know, 
or knowing did not think to mention. 
These we found out by degrees. The man 
was perfectly honest, or he appeared to be 
so, but somehow. he made a mistake about 
Old Jim’s age. But horses that are for 
sale rarely get to be over eight years old, 
as girls seldom pass eighteen. 

There was a large body of land inside 
our field that had not been cleared, and in 
the early spring the grass grew upon it 
finely. Saturday night we generally turned 
Old Jim loose in the field to graze until 


“old JIM.” 63 

Monday morning; but when Monday came, 
Old Jim had to be “cornered” before 
he could be caught. One Monday morn- 
ing I went whistling down to where Old 
Jim stood, with a bunch of fodder under 
my arm and the bridle in my hand, to catch 
him and feed him, ready for the plow after 
breakfast. Old Jim seemed to be perfect- 
ly amiable, and “whinnied” for the fod- 
der and went to eating it, and I walked up 
and took hold of his foretop to put the bri- 
dle on him, when all of a sudden he backed 
up his ears and grabbed me in the side and 
bit a piece out of me as long as your finger. 
O how it hurt ! I went squalling home to 
mother, and she doctored me as best she 
could. 

It took us half the day to get the bridle 
on that horse. Old Jim was an educated 
horse, good in many things and awfully 
mean in others. 


HOLIDAY THOUGHTS, 


f I ^HE Christmas season is the best and 
• I • brightest season of the year to our 
1 children and young people. Some of 
us, who are older and less susceptible to the 
enjoyments peculiar to this festival, are not 
so glad. Indeed, to older persons Christ- 
mases are too frequent to afford the pleasure 
they gave when the Christmases were far- 
ther apart. When we were young, it was, 
or it seemed to be, an age from Christmas 
to Christmas; but now, Christmas always 
comes before we are ready for it. The 
years are hardly a span long now. I won- 
der if the years will continue to grow still 
shorter as age comes on? The little folks, 
so numerous in this country, and the young 
people, are making preparations for a great 
time. Too few of them, alas! ever think 
of Christ in connection with Christmas, 
though the name is suggestive of the true 
import of this festival. Our Christmases 
( 64 ) 


HOLIDAY THOUGHTS. 65 

have been so given over to frivolity and sin 
that many of our young people, and not a 
few of the old ones, have come to regard 
this as the season for unbridled license, par- 
ticularly in the use of ardent spirits, and 
“ such diversions as cannot be used in the 
name of Christ.” In some places our 
churches are largely to blame for this. 
They have not magnified the name of Christ 
as they should have done at this season of 
the year. They have not been open on 
Christmas for the worship and praise of our 
Lord. The devil and the world have capt- 
ured Christmas, and turned it against 
Christ. In some homes, and in some of 
our churches, this festival is an occasion for 
impressing on the minds of the children and 
the people the story of the incarnation and 
birth of our blessed Lord. When properly 
used, the occasion and the custom of mak- 
ing presents are calculated to grind these 
great initial facts in the life of Christ into 
the minds of our children. 

When Christmas comes, there is always a 
kind of letting go of the old in order to take 
a firm grip on the new year. This is well. 

5 


66 


ODD HOURS. 


To some people Christmas is the time to be- 
gin anew, to renew. Many pledges and 
promises of better living are made. New 
leaves are turned over, and some lives are 
made better. Some who promise to amend 
their lives at Christmas or on New-year’s- 
day die before the time arrives. They do 
not live to see the beginning of a better life. 
Others pass this day without improvement, 
and flatter themselves they will begin next 
year. Thus they go from year to year, 
getting farther from God and deeper into 
the darkness of sin. Some people do not 
know, or knowing do not care, that to- 
morrow never comes. The wise man says, 
“ Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou 
knowest not what a day may bring forth ; ’ ’ 
and a wiser than he said, “Therefore be 
ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye 
think not the Son of man cometh.” O the 
danger and folly of procrastination in mat- 
ters that concern the immortal soul ! Next 
year, next month, next week, to-morrow, I 
will turn to God; but to-night my soul is 
required of me, and I go to meet my Lord. 
Put it off as we may, but the last year, the 


HOLIDAY THOUGHTS. 67 

last month, the last week, the last hour, the 
last minute, the last second will come, and 
we know not which one may be the last. 
The only safe way is to be ready. The rea- 
son for being ready is that we do not know 
when God may call for us. The faith that 
saves the soul is not the faith of yesterday, 
nor the faith that may be on the morrow. 
It is not the faith of the past hour or min- 
ute, nor the faith of the next hour or minute. 
It is the faith that fixes down on the present 
needle-point of time and says : ‘ ‘ Now, Lord, 
right, now, I believe.” When the penitent 
sinner comes to this point, he steps into life 
— God forgives his sins. The Holy Ghost 
renews, recreates the love and image of God 
in his heart. ' He is made a new creature 
in Christ Jesus our Lord. Old things pass 
away, and all things beconie new. As long 
as faith holds, keeps fixed upon the moment, 
there is a living, growing experience of grace 
in the heart and life. If faith holds firmly, 
keeps strongly fixed on the present instant, 
one need not sin, cannot sin. Faith and 
sin never exist, never will exist, at the same 
time in the same heart. Faith and sin are 


68 


ODD HOURS. 


incompatible, antagonistic; they cannot be 
mixed. Righteousness is the legitimate, the 
natural, the necessary fruit of faith. Un- 
righteousness — sin, all forms of sin — is the 
natural, legitimate, necessary fruit of unbe- 
lief. Men who believe are saved ; men who 
disbelieve are damned. The only damning 
sin is the sin of unbelief. This sin produces 
profanity in one, lewdness in another, and 
some other form or forms of sin in still an- 
other. Even if all the open forms of sin 
were left off, the sin of unbelief would send 
the soul to hell. Indeed, to put it more 
strongly, men are not sent to hell for lying, 
stealing, swearing, but for refusing to be- 
lieve in Christ. Thy faith hath saved thee; 
thine unbelief hath damned thee. The 
morality of the moralist and the legalism of 
the legalist are alike abominable in the sight 
of God, being unmixed with faith in them 
who do these things. Unbelief may, often 
does, take the form of religiousness — “ steals 
the livery of heaven to serve the devil in.” 
Perhaps no form of sin is so ruinous, so 
blinding to the human soul. The moral- 
ist, the legalist, may have and hold much 


HOLIDAY THOUGHTS. 69 

truth, but he holds it in unrighteousness, in 
sin. What does it matter how much truth 
one may have if the devil can only slip in a 
drop of poison to ruin the soul? Some of 
the worst sinners in the world, the hardest 
to reach, have the form of godliness, but 
deny its power. They pray after a sort, 
pay tithes of all they have, fast twice a 
week; but, after all, they are in the gall of 
bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity, fast 
bound in the chains of sin; full of forms, 
but destitute of faith. God pity them ! 


IS THERE HARM IN DANCING? 


HERE are many in this country, both 



• • men and women, who maintain that 


1 dancing is an innocent and improving 
recreation. They insist that the Church is 
wrong in opposing it. Now this scribe 
never saw a company of persons dancing in 
all his life ; and yet he has been living right 
here in Mississippi, where dancing has been 
going on all these years. The effects of 
dancing he has seen, and he sees it now 
more and more as time goes by. Judging 
from the effects, dancing is one of the most 
seductive, dangerous, and delusive pastimes 
to which our young people are given. I do 
not mean now that it is dangerous to life 
and limb, but to piety and purity. I have 
yet to see a single man or woman, in the 
Church or out of it, who regularly attended 
the dance and at the same time maintained 
a character for piety. Whatever else may 
or may not be true, dancing and religion do 


( 70 ) 


IS THERE HARM IN DANCING? 7 1 

not go well together. The love of the dance 
and the love of God are never found in the 
same heart. I have known hundreds of 
persons who tried to mix dancing and relig- 
ion, but they have always made a miserable 
failure of it. They will not mix. 

My observation is that as the years go by 
there is a growing tendency to increased 
forms of voluptuousness in the dance. 
Young people begin with that which is least 
objectionable, and they go on, step by step, 
following the fashion, until modesty is 
shamed and virtue exposed. If. they do 
what the young people tell me they do, I 
cannot understand how a truly modest wom- 
an can submit to the liberties taken with her 
person in the more fashionable forms of the 
dance. Young ladies may submit to these 
things and retain maiden purity in their 
hearts ; but one thing I know just as well as 
I know my name: these liberties permitted, 
if not courted by women, stir an awfully 
ugly devil in the hearts of men. However 
much a young man may enjoy taking these 
liberties at the time, one thing is certain: the 
personal purity of the woman who permits 


72 ODD HOURS. 

them is lowered in his estimation from ten 
to one hundred degrees after the hour of ex- 
citement is past. To deny this is to give 
the lie to the plain facts of human nature, 
to the natural instincts of men. The wom- 
an who yields to the embrace of her partner 
in the dance sacrifices with him her charac- 
ter for purity just in proportion as she yields 
ardently or cringingly, reluctantly. Now 
mark that, will you? jot it down in your 
memory. It is putting things plainly, but 
truthfully. Men will take — even clever men 
and gentlemen — about all the liberties wom- 
en permit; never less, rarely more. It is in 
the nature of men to do this, unless nature 
has been regenerated by the Holy Ghost 
and its natural outgoings are restrained by 
grace. Women, particularly very young 
women, may not know these things, but it 
is about time they were finding them out. 
Their mothers ought to tell them plainly, 
pointedly, prayerfully. Some girls find out 
the truth after it is too late. Utter ruin has 
sealed their fate for this life. When the 
dike of womanly modesty is once broken 
down, the road to ruin is a short one. After 


IS THERE HARM IN DANCING? 73 

all has been said, there are some women so 
given up to fashion and folly that they will 
sacrifice upon this altar their modesty, their 
purity, and their souls. Present folly and 
present exposure may give present pleasure ; 
but they will entail years of sorrow, sin, and 
shame. If the women say nay, not a single 
liberty will be taken with them in the dance, 
or anywhere else, in any way damaging to 
them or to men. In this they hold the bal- 
ance of power. It is a shame, so I have 
heard, to speak of the things done in the 
more modern and fashionable forms of the 
dance. 


GOOD OLD GRANDMOTHERS. 


A s one goes around the country he sees 
so many good old women, just as 
gentle and sweet as they can be, out 
of whose hearts every particle of selfishness 
and sin has been cast long ago. Their 
lives have been lives of service and suffering, 
until they find their chief joy in doing good 
to somebody, waiting on the sick, comfort- 
ing the sorrowing, and sympathizing with 
the children in their little losses and crosses. 
There is nothing in this world more to be 
admired and loved than one of these pre- 
cious, good old women — one who has re- 
tained her sweetness down to green old age. 
They are like rich, ripe fruit hanging on 
the tree, mellowing in the autumn sun. 
They are the most innocent and most un- 
suspecting human beings found on the face 
of God’s green earth. They are so pure 
and true themselves — have such a kindly 
feeling for everybody and for every thing — 
( 74 ) 


GOOD OLD GRANDMOTHERS. 75 

that they are not suspicious of anybody or 
any thing. No class is so easily imposed 
upon as these good old women, and there 
are few people in this world so lost to all 
that is good as to try to impose upon them. 
The}^ are open to practical jokes by bad, 
mischievous boys, grandsons, and others; 
but when a joke of this kind is practiced 
upon one of them, she takes it so kindly, 
manifests so much pleasure at being the oc- 
casion of so much fun to the boys, that 
the “ sap” is all taken out of the joke; and 
a grandson, no matter how mischievous he 
may be, rarely attempts “sharp practice” 
on his dear old grandmother the second 
time. She is too sweet and sacred for a 
joke. O how these blessed old women 
enter into a boy’s sorrows! and how they 
sympathize with his plans ! A boy who 
hasn’t a grandmother or some good old 
woman to whom he can open his heart and 
lay his plans is almost friendless in this 
wide world. Nobody in the world, not even 
fa mother, will enter into the world a boy is 
building for himself like his dear old grand- 
mother. She will listen to all his talk, check 


ODD HOURS. 


76 

him here, suggest an improvement there, 
and help to make his air-castles as real as 
possible. When a boy has failed to get 
sympathy elsewhere, he always goes to his 
grandmother — his hungry heart is sure to 
find it here. Most boys will tell their grand- 
mothers things they would not tell anybody 
else living, and all because they get sym- 
pathy, gentleness, and love. This is the 
royal road to the citadel of the human heart. 
To be a friend indeed, one must show him- 
self a friend in time of need. Sympathy, 
sentimental and practical, touches the hu- 
man heart as nothing else can do. If we 
do not sympathize with men, particularly 
with those below us, those who are suffering 
pr are in want, those whose hearts are heavy, 
whose heads are bowed down, we need not 
hope to lift them up, to lead them to Christ, 
to scatter sunshine along their pathway. In- 
ternal goodness, goodness wrought in us by 
the Holy Ghost, Christliness, is the only 
thing that will put us into hearty sympathy 
with men. 


A SNIPE-HUNT. 


I T was too bad, I know it was, but then 
it wa^ funny the way the boj^s got Jim 
into a ‘‘snipe-hunt.” Jim was an un- 
sophisticated country boy, brought up on a 
farm at hard work, and knew but little of 
town h)oys and their ways. He got tired 
of the farm and came to town to clerk in a 
dry goods store. In a few days it was 
whispered around among the town boys that 
Jim was a good case- and ought to be broken 
in at the earliest moment possible. 

A ‘‘snipe-hunt” was arranged for Jim's 
special benefit. First one and then another 
of the boys dropped in and expatiated large- 
ly to Jim on the pleasures of snipe-hunting 
and the immense number of snipes that could 
be caught in a sack at night. Jim had seen 
a few snipes in his life, and he had often shot 
at them on the farm, and occasionally had 
killed one; but, somehow, the birds had a 
way of jumping up at the crack of the gun, 

( 77 ) 


ODD HOURS. 


78 

and were not easily killed. This thing of 
catching fifty or one hundred snipes in a 
meal-sack at night was entirely new to him, 
and he was anxious to see it done. 

When the boys got Jim in good trim, they 
appointed a night and arranged their plans 
to have rare fun. They went to an old field 
three-quarters of a mile from town, where, 
according to their reports, there were any 
number of snipes from one hundred to sev- 
eral thousand. The hill-sides were washed 
into deep gullies, and Jim was to hold the 
sack open at the mouth of one of these 
gullies down near the branch while the boys 
went up the hill and drove the snipes down. 
When the sack was full, Jim was to shut 
them in. The night was quite dark and 
fearfully cold ; but Jim squatted down to hold 
the sack in good earnest so as to bag the 
game. He sat there alone in the dark shiver- 
ing for nearly half an hour, while the boys 
lay in ambush not far off. Finally the boys 
began to make a number of most unearthly 
noises, when Jim threw down his sack and 
took to his heels toward town, fully satisfied 
with snipe-hunting. The boys took after 


A SNIPE-HUNT. 79 

him, yelling now and then like panthers and 
occasionally firing off a blank cartridge. 

Jim took the nearest shoot for town, over 
ditches and fences and into gullies as if a 
tiger were after him, but somehow the boys 
beat him to town, or at least some of them 
did, and when Jim dashed into the store 
where he was employed as a clerk, muddy 
and wet and out of breath, the boys gath- 
ered around him. One of them said, “ Hi, 
Jim, are you back this soon?” and another 
asked, “Where are the snipes, Jim?” 
while the third queried, “ How many did 
you catch? ” Jim was a good fellow, and 
as soon as he got his breath sufficiently to 
allow him to speak, he said: “ Well, boys, 
I have made a fool of myself, and I may just 
as well own it.” 

The boys did many clever things for Jim, 
and took him into their confidence and so- 
ciety, and they all loved him for his good 
nature, but they call him Jim Snipes till this 
day, and they will do so as long as he is in 
the country. Jim says the boys “ hazed 
him,” and I suppose they did. 


GENUINE FAITH AND COR- 
RECT FAITH. 


HE religious life of children, young 



• • people, and ignorant people is often 


1 injured, if not totally spoiled, by per- 
sons who do not understand or appreciate 
the world-wide difference there is between 
genuine faith and correct faith. One’s faith 
may be genuine, and yet in many things in- 
correct ; or it may be correct, and not at all 
genuine. “The devils believe.” It does 
not follow that because one has correct 
views about God, his word, the plan of sal- 
vation, and future rewards and punishments, 
he has genuine, saving faith in Christ; nor 
does it follow that crude and imperfect 
views of God and his word prevent a peni- 
tent soul from believing with a heart unto 
righteousness. A correct faith is largely — 
yea, mainly — a matter of the head, of asso- 
ciation, of education, of early training. A 
genuine faith is a matter of the heart, the 


( 80 ) 


GENUINE FAITH, CORRECT FAITH. 8 1 

spirit, the inner man co-operating with or 
answering to the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of 
God. Correctness of faith is the fruit of 
reading, of information, while genuineness 
of faith is the fruit of the Spirit. The one 
grows out of information about sin, and the 
other out of conviction for sin. The first 
is of the head, the second of the heart. 

I am glad that pastors in our Church are 
authorized to take persons into the Church 
whenever they are satisfied of the “gen- 
uineness of their faith.’' If it had said 
“correctness of their faith,” who would 
have been sufficient for these things ? Who 
should judge? By what standard should 
applicants be tried? If by the Creed, the 
Twenty-five Articles, what pastor has an ab- 
solutely correct knowledge of these ? Cor- 
rectness of faith is a question of creeds, of 
catechisms, of standards of doctrine, of in- 
terpretations, and such like things. It is 
always relative and forever imperfect. Gen- 
uine faith, the faith of the heart, the faith 
that saves, is a fruit-bearing faith, and it is 
certainly known by its fruits. No matter how 
young the child nor how ignorant the man, 
6 


82 


ODD HOURS. 


there are infallible tests of the genuineness 
of his faith. If one has genuine faith, he is 
a proper person to be taken into the Church. 
Take him into the Church, under its disci- 
pline, into the school of Christ, through a 
course of training and into a measure of 
correctness the highest attainable in the 
curriculum of our school. Reject no man 
because he is ignorant, because his faith is 
incorrect about many doctrines and duties 
of our holy religion. The best of us have 
little to boast of when it comes to perfect 
and infallible correctness of faith. 

Some parents and teachers and leaders 
among us continue to insist on a degree of 
knowledge, a correctness of faith on the 
part of their children or those under their 
care, in order to Church-membership, that 
they themselves have not attained. A “ cor- 
rect faith” exhibits itself in creeds, in the- 
ories, in definitions, in hair-splitting distinc- 
tions, and in critical analyses of the text. 
A genuine faith shows itself in loving obe- 
dience to the commandments of God, or 
what are understood to be the requirements 
of our holy religion. I have known many 


GENUINE FAITH, CORRECT FAITH. 83 

a child and many a grown man who had 
genuine faith to do as religious service many 
silly and foolish things, and I have known 
many a man of comparatively correct faith 
to spend his whole life in sin. Most of us 
are more correct in our faith than in our 
practice. The trouble with us lies deeper 
than our heads; it is in our hearts. We 
have little or no genuine faith. I joined the 
Church on the Shorter Catechisni. I did 
not understand it. I do not think the Ses- 
sion understood all of it. They took me in 
graciously on account of my youth and my 
ignorance, and in view of the possible out- 
come in me. One thing I knew as well as 
any of my inquisitors: I loved God and 
wanted to serve him. 


SALLIE TAYLOR IS DEAD. 


R. Editor: My pig is dead. Her 



name was Sallie Taylor. A neigh- 


i JL bor of ours, Mrs. Taylor, gave her 
to me when she was about a week old. She 
was the tiniest little pig I ever saw. At 
first I fed her on gruel with a spoon. I 
kept her in a box on a good bed. Sallie 
soon knew me as well as she did her moth- 
er. I was as proud as I could be when she 
learned how to eat by herself out of a plate. 
She was the only pig I ever had, and I loved 
her with all my might. When the morn- 
ings were cold, ma allowed me to bring her 
in by the stove, where she could keep warm 
while eating her breakfast. It would have 
done you good to see her lean up against 
the stove to keep warm. Sallie was more 
like folks than pigs. She knew her name 
just as well as any other one of our family. 
When I would go to the door and call her 
name, “Sallie,” she would come running 


( 84 ) 


SALLIE TAYLOR IS DEAD. 85 

to me, grunting in the cheerfulest tones you 
ever heard. 

Sallie was the prettiest and the “ good- 
est^’ pig I ever saw. She was as fat and 
plump as a butter-ball, and as black and 
sleek as a crow. 

When Sallie got too big for her box, she 
slept on some old rags and part of an o]d 
bed-quilt, in a hole under the kitchen'floor. 
She would root under the old quilt on the 
south side of a lame rooster that sat on the 
old rags at night. When the bitter cold 
weather came, I was uneasy about Sallie. 
I was afraid she would freeze. Ma said 
she would not, and I hoped ma was right 
about it. I was in a hurry to get up every 
morning to see about my pig. When I 
called her name, she would come running 
and lay her little head lovingly on my arm 
like some sweet child. This morning I 
called Sallie, and she did not answer me as 
she always did before. I crawled under 
the kitchen and, O horrible! there lay Sal- 
lie in a hole away from her bed, cold and 
stiff. It nearly broke my heart. I took 
her up in my arms and ran into the house 


86 


ODD HOURS. 


crying as loud as I could. Ma cried too. 
It was a hard trial to me. I tried to warm 
her up by the fire, hoping she would come 
back to life again, arid ma helped me to put 
some warm coffee in her mouth with a 
spoon ; but it was of no use, for Sallie was 
dead. Sallie was the only near relative I 
ever lost in my life. The rough boys, my 
brothers, wanted to throw her away, but I 
couldnH stand that. I’m going- to keep 
Sallie till the snow is gone, and then we are 
going to bury her in a nice new grave, and 
I want all my friends to come to the funeral. 

It is so^ard to lose a good pig just when 
you have learned to love it with all your 
heart. I want to put a nice tombstone at 
the head of Sallie’ s grave. I never knew 
what trouble was until now. I want all my 
friends to pray for me. My sister said I 
could get another pig, but I don’t want any 
other, for there is no other pig in the whole 
world as good and as pretty as Sallie Tay- 
lor. O how I wish I had taken her in bed 
with me last night, where I could have kept 
her warm ! and then my Sallie would be 
here with me to-day. 


SALLIE TAYLOR IS DEAD. 87 

Mr. Editor, tell the children my heart is 
broken now. 

Your little friend, Alice. 

P. S. — Do you suppose Sallie Taylor has 
gone to heaven, where good boys and girls 
go when they die? 

A LETTER OF CONDOLENCE. 

Hiwassee College, East Tenn. 

Dear Alice: I have read in the Advocate 
your touching account of the death of 
Sallie Taylor. I am an entire stranger to 
you and to all of your kinsfolk, but I feel 
like telling you how much I enjoyed the 
mournful tribute to your pet. 

A short time since our colored boys, Will 
and Ben, found in the woods hard by a lit- 
ter of eight beautiful Berkshire pigs. Their 
mother had made an immense bed of leaves. 
The boys made a shelter and such other pro- 
tection as they thought needed, but in the 
night the wind changed, and such a snow- 
storm as you never saw came up, and what 
with the snow and the bitter, pitiless wind, 
the pigs were found all frozen but two. I 


88 


ODD HOURS. 


expect this happened on the same night that 
finished all that was mortal of poor Sallie 
Taylor. 

The boys brought the two pigs to the 
house and kept them in their room by the 
fire, and fed them on warm milk. The first 
night the pigs fussed so that the boys took 
them in bed with them. After three days I 
gave them to a little neighbor girl named 
Ella Haun. One of the pigs died; but the 
biggest one, the one we called “Oliver 
Twist,” because he always wanted more, is 
still alive and growing fast. But his name 
is changed. He is known as “ Ella’s Sad- 
dle,” I suppose because Ella intends to 
buy a saddle with him. She is beginning 
to ride horseback, and covets a saddle of 
her own. 

But it sounds funny to hear one sa3s 
“ Drive ‘Ella’s Saddle ’ out of the kitchen,” 
or, “ Look ! ‘Ella’s Saddle ’ has its nose in 
the skillet.” I hope the pig will do well. 

Your true and sympathizing friend, 

Mrs. John II. Brunner. 



THE M/S SIS S/EE/ GORILLA 


J ESSE McGee lived in Winston coun- 
ty, Miss., near Tilby Creek, a beauti- 
ful, clear, ever-running stream, well 
stocked with several kinds of fish. Mr. 
McGee was a farmer, blacksmith, and wag- 
on-maker, hence he found but little time to 
fish with hook and line ; but for many years 
he kept a fish-trap in Tilby Creek, a mile 
north of his house. At those seasons of the 
year when fish were running, and the water 
was at the right stage, his table was supplied 
with the choicest kinds of fish. It was a treat 
for a hungry man to sit down at his board. 

Mr. McGee was a tall, dark-skinned, 
raw-boned, and very meditative old man. 
He thought deeply and spoke slowly and 
with great deliberation, as if every word 
were weighed and measured. He was a 
wise man, well versed in human nature and 
in the affairs of life, though he was not an 
educated man in the popular acceptation of 

( 89 ) 


ODD HOURS. 


90 

the term. He was one of the most promi- 
nent and influential men in the section of 
country where he lived. His good sense, 
deep piety, prudence, and force of charac- 
ter would have given him a front place in 
any community in the land. 

To persons who did not know him well 
Mr. McGee had the appearance of being a 
solemn, sad man, wholly destitute of fun and 
humor, yet there was a deep and constant 
under-current of humor in all he did and said. 
It was called “ dry fun ” by his friends. 

Negroes and “ sorry ” white people got to 
visiting Mr. McGee’s fish-trap at night to 
rob it of fish. He tried many ways to pre- 
vent this, but could not. Finally a report 
became current in the country that a gorilla 
had been seen in Tilby Creek near Mr. Mc- 
Gee’s fish-trap, and that it was destroying 
all his fish. From some cause this report 
could not be traced to any reliable source, 
but the story grew as it went until it was 
currently reported and generally believed 
that the gorilla preferred human flesh to 
fish, and the flesh of a negro to that of a 
white man. 


THE MISSISSIPPI GORILLA. ' 9I 

The story acted like a charm. The fish- 
trap was distant from human habitation, in 
a lonely, desolate part of the swamp, near 
a large beaver-dam. Timid people, credu- 
lous and superstitious, would not like to go 
prowling around in such a place after hear- 
ing such awful stories as were told about the 
gorilla, the new wonder, that had been seen 
and heard at and near the McGee fish-trap 
on Tilby Creek, in Winston county. Miss. 

Now there chanced to be not far from 
Mr. McGee’s farm a school-teacher named 
Bowles, a bookish sort of man, destitute of 
common sense, who imagined himself to be 
a sort of Solomon among a race of dunces 
down South in the land of Dixie. He 
“ pooh-poohed” at the story of the gorilla, 
and said “ none but ignorant, silly, uncul- 
tivated people ever believed such stories; 
that such stories could not gain currency in 
any country but in the South.” 

He went to Mr. McGee to ask him all 
about it. The old man simply rehearsed 
the story from beginning to end in his slow, 
solemn, impressive way. Mr. Bowles mis- 
took his earnest manner for full faith in the 


92 * ODD HOURS. 

gorilla and its wonderful doings on Tilby 
Creek. 

In order to exhibit himself and expose the 
ignorance and superstition of the people in 
that country, Mr. Bowles proposed to spend 
a night with Mr. McGee at the fish-trap, and 
discover and kill, or capture, the gorilla that 
had become the terror of the negroes and 
white boys for miles around. 

The time was set and the arrangements 
ail made, and the mode of warfare agreed 
upon. Mr. McGee was to load his double- 
barrel shot-gun for Mr. Bowles, and both 
of them were to sit on the fish-trap and 
watch for the gorilla, and when it came into 
view Mr. Bowles was to kill it outright. 
The school-teacher did not believe the go- 
rilla story at the start, but he had heard it 
so often, and from those who believed it so 
firmly, that by the law of sympathy he had 
become a little shaky along the lumbar re- 
gion and about the knees. He had gone 
too far to back out without disgrace, and 
then, too, he might never again enjoy such 
an opportunity to make a great hero of 
himself. 


THE MISSISSIPPI GORILLA. 93 

Mr. McGee secured a confederate in this 
game in the person of a trusty young negro 
man who worked with him in the shop. 

The gun was to be charged with powder 
and a soft cotton wad, and about midnight 
Ned was to throw himself into the creek two 
hundred yards above the trap, and come 
rolling, tumbling, puffing, and blowing down 
to the trap, with all the hideous groans and 
growls at his command. 

Ned played his part to perfection. When 
he plunged into the creek with an un- 
earthly growl, the sound broke the aw- 
ful silence and echoed and re-echoed up 
and down the creek bottom like the roar 
of artillery. 

Mr. McGee touched Mr. Bowles on the 
arm, and in a husky, grave-yard sort of tone 
said: “ That’s the gorilla. He is coming. 
Take good aim.” Poor Bowles began to 
tremble from head to foot, like a jar of jelly, 
and his teeth began to chatter, and he said : 
‘‘ It-it is-is awful cold.” 

Ned came on slowly, splashing the water 
and sending forth the most inhuman sounds 
imaginable. 


94 


ODD HOURS. 


Mr. McGee became terribly excited, or 
appeared to be so, and this was not calcu- 
lated to quiet the nerves of Mr. Bowles. 

At last Ned reached the upper end of 
the trap, when Mr. McGee said, “Shoot! 
shoot I ” and instantly “bang I bang I ’’ went 
both barrels of the gun, reverberating along 
the creek like thunder. 

The gorilla came on with an awful scream, 
when Mr. McGee leaped to the shore and 
said, “Bowles, take care of yourself!” 
With that Bowles rolled off of the trap into 
ten-foot water below, and Ned piled over 
after him, when it became a sort of life-and- 
death struggle with Bowles to get to the 
shore before the monster got hold of him. 
As he clambered up the bank Ned gave him 
an awful grip on the calf of his leg, accom- 
panied by the growl of a lion. 

Bowles screamed and leaped to his feet 
and struck out toward home, scrambling 
through bushes and jumping over logs and 
ditches with the agility of a deer. When 
he reached Mr. McGee’s, out of breath 
and excited nearly to death, he fright- 
ened the women folks greatly, and told a 


THE MISSISSIPPI GORILLA. 95 

terrible story of his narrow 'escape from the 
gorilla, or something of that kind. 

When Mr. McGee got home as placid as 
a lamb, Mr. Bowles began to realize that he 
had been the subject of a practical joke, and 
proposed to perpetuate and intensify the go- 
rilla story for the protection of Mr. McGee’s 
fish-trap, on condition that the family did 
not expose him to the jeers and ridicule of 
the neighborhood. 

There is a streak of superstition and fear 
in nearly all the men and women of the 
world. It may be latent in you, but under 
proper conditions it may be fanned to a 
flame. It is best not to boast too much of 
your courage. It might fail you when the 
crisis comes. 


TALKING TO HIS HORSE, 


I MADE a good long trip to the south-west 
corner of this district just as the ground 
began to thaw after the last long cold 
snap . The roads were muddy everywhere ; 
not an inch of good road to be found. The 
best part of the road was the muddiest part, 
right along in the well-beaten track, where 
most of the travel had gone. Outside of 
this it was boggy. The worst places, and 
the most dangerous, were on tops of the 
highest sand-hills. Here my horse seemed 
to go right down. When I got into a sec- 
tion of country where there was deep red 
clay subsoil I was safe ; but sandy subsoils 
or white or light clay subsoils were danger- 
ous. Wherever long red oaks or white oaks 
grew you might look out for a bog down. 
The roads were treacherous. The best- 
looking places were the worst. My horse 
knew, or thought he knew, a thing or two 
about roads ; but the poor fellow made many 
( 96 ) 


* TALKING TO mS HORSE. 


97 

mistakes in trying to pick a firm place to 
plant his feet upon, and he was only too glad 
to get back into the main track where the 
mud was. He would, however, insist on try- 
ing again what seemed to be a firm place. 

I said to him (for I often talk my thoughts 
to my horse, just for the sake of company) ; 
“ Tom, you remind me of some venturesome, 
or adventurous, preachers who are always 
turning out of the old beaten track of theol- 
ogy, with its difficulties, to find firmer ground 
just outside of the old way. These preach- 
ers bog down just like you ; and after a 
hard struggle, just like you, they are glad to 
get back into the old paths. These well- 
worn tracks show every particle of mud be- 
cause they have been so thoroughly tramped ; 
but just underneath the mud, which is not 
so deep as it appears to be, there is firm 
ground. These firm-looking places at the 
side of the road rest on a deep bed of miry 
clay. As soon as you break through the 
thin layer on top you are gone, you know 
not where. You fall into what appe'ars to 
be a ‘pit of miry clay.’ Now, Tom, I pull 
on the reins and try to keep you off of these 
7 


ODD HOURS. 


98 

dangerous places, but you persist in having 
your own way. You seem to learn nothing 
from experience. Here are the infallible 
signs of danger — the long, slim red oaks and 
the white oaks and this light or white clay 
cropping out here and there — but you take 
heed to none of these things. In trying to 
avoid an inch or two in depth of slush in the 
midde of the road you bog down in mud 
over your knees in these firm-looking places 
just outside of the old way. Why, Tom, in 
the old way, where all the mud appears to 
be, you go with a steady, easy, comfortable 
tread, but when you turn out and begin to 
bog you step quick and fast and make a 
mighty to do. That is just the way one of 
these silly preachers does when he turns 
out of the old theological track. He begins 
to tramp and mutter and splutter as if the 
whole Church were going down, but it is 
only himself that is in the mire. Tom, you 
may not know it, but I am older than you 
are, and I have traveled more, and I know 
more "about the roads than you. However, 
adventurous youth rarely listens to age and 
experience, but goes ahead and has its own 


TALKING TO HIS HORSE. 


99 

way, so I need not look for wisdom in a 
dumb brute like you. I’ll tell you, Tom, 
good and great men have been traveling 
over these theological roads for nearly six 
thousand years. Theology is the oldest 
science known among men. It has a well- 
beaten track. There are other sciences 
that lie along the way; some of them nearly 
six thousand years younger than theology, 
and some of them with miry clay and quick- 
sand foundations, and into these young 
bloods plunge only to bog down. Now, 
Tom, these old travelers have put up signs 
along the way to show where the dangerous 
places are, just as God has planted the long 
red oak and white oak trees on the white 
clay foundations; but, Tom, these young 
preachers don’t see, or like you, they don’t 
heed these signs, and hence they are always 
getting into trouble. They are trying to 
hunt out new ways, parallel to the old track, 
though diverging from it at an angle that 
will land them in the tangled underbrush of 
doubt and unbelief.” 

Tom seemed to be in a meditative mood, 
and I was so absorbed in my speech that I 


lOO 


ODD HOURS. 


forgot to notice the timber, and, just here, 
we struck a white oak ridge, and Tom turned 
out of the road and bogged down, so I had 
to dismount on my all-fours and give him a 
chance to get out as best he could. After 
a hard struggle, puffing and blowing, he 
came to a dead halt in the middle of the road, 
where the mud was shoe-mouth deep, and 
waited for me to mount. 

“Now,’’ thought I, “you will listen to 
me next time;” but Tom kept on hunting 
for the hard-looking places and bogging all 
the way home. 

O may all these bogging preachers get 
home at last ! 


A GOAT STORY, 


I T was a big time, a great occasion, a 
wonderful event among the boys of our 
town when Swepson’s new Billy-goat and 
wagon arrived. The news spread like wild- 
fire, and strightway every boy in town was 
seen, hat in hand, running as for life to see 
the goat and wagon. Swepson would have 
enjoyed the company and help of one or 
two boys of his own age, but this time there 
were too many of them, too much help, too 
many suggestions made, too many questions 
asked, and too many boys that wanted to 
ride. The bustle, stir, and big talk would 
have confused a mature man, to say noth- 
ing of a boy under ten. 

The goat, though born, bred, and trained 
in town, seemed somewhat confused by the 
commotion his presence excited on this oc- 
casion. He looked as though he thought it 
was “much ado about nothing,” a great 
stir over a small affair. He knew how to 

( 101 ) 


102 


ODD HOURS. 


draw the wagon with one or two boys in it ; 
but to be hauled this way and then pulled* 
that way by first one and then another of 
these rude boys was rather too much for the 
dignity of his goatship, so he bowed his 
neck and butted two of the boys at one lick 
heels over head into a big gully. They 
crawled out, crest-fallen and muddy, if not 
wiser and more cautious. This created a 
great laugh among the boys, each one de- 
claring he was not afraid of a goat; but 
from that time on Billy had a wider berth 
and more breathing-room. Some people, 
some animals, even some goats, will not be 
imposed on forever — or at least I’ve known 
it to be so here in Mississippi, and I suppose 
folks and other animals are pretty much 
alike the world over. 

Well, for some days Swepson and his 
goat, harness, and wagon were the town- 
talk among the boys in Verona. Every boy 
in town wanted a goat and wagon of his 
own. Half of them coveted Swepson’ s 
wagon and team. I quoted to one sharp 
boy the commandment, “Thou shalt not 
covet,” when the young rascal, with a 


A (?bAT STORY. 


103 


twinkle in his eye, said: “ Yes, but it don’t 
say, ‘ Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s 
wagon and goat.’ ” “ O yes, it does, my 

son,” I replied, “for it says, ‘Thou shalt 
not covet any thing that is thy neighbor’s.’ ” 
“Well,” said he, “you’ve got me, for that 
means the wagon and goat or any thing else 
your neighbor may have.” 

In a few days half the calves and dogs and 
a few of the goats in town were in strings, and 
the boys were trying to break them to har- 
ness. Each boy was bent on having a team 
of his own. The desire to own something 
— to have something we can call our own — 
is innate in the human heart. This desire 
is found in the hearts of very small boys 
and girls. It is well enough for parents 
and guardians to see that each child has his 
own things, and that playthings, books, and 
clothing are not held as common propert}?- 
in the family. Selfishness on the one hand 
and a disregard for the property and rights 
of others on the other hand are two of the 
crying evils of the day, against which we 
must guard our children by careful and 
prayerful training at home. They must 


104 HOURS. 

learn how to take care of their own things, 
and at the same time care for the things of 
other people. 

But to our story. Willie kept after his 
father a day or two to say that he might 
have the calf — a large, fat yearling — for his 
own. His father consented. Willie worked 
hard for three days and a half sawing out 
wheels, making axles and shafts for a wagon 
of his own, that he might drive his calf as 
Swepson did his goat. After much worry 
and work the wagon stood complete, except 
the bed, and an old cracker-box nailed on 
answered for this. His father’s plow-gear, 
shortened up every way, supplied the place 
of harness. After much noise and ado the 
calf was caught and the gear put on, though 
the calf seemed quite ticklish while under- 
going this operation. Toward the last he 
grew sullen and would not move ; but the 
boys, failing to get Ben to the wagon, brought 
the wagon to Ben and hitched him in. Wil- 
lie, with an air of triumph, caught up the 
lines and his whip and jumped into his 
cracker-box wagon-bed and packed himself 
down into it, though it was a close fit every 


A GOAT STORY. 


105 

way. Willie gave the word, and the boys 
let Ben go, when Willie cracked his whip 
as a signal for Ben to start. Unfortunately, 
however, Ben bucked, began to bellow, and 
went across the sweet-potato ridges jump- 
ing, snorting, and bellowing as if a panther 
were after him. The wagon jumped from 
* ridge to ridge, first this way and then that, 
as if it were mad too. In a moment or two 
the wagon turned over; but on went Ben, 
sometimes Willie on top and then the wagon 
on top . It was a fearfully rough ride for both 
wagon and boy. 

The cracker-box held the boy fast for 
quite awhile, when at last the nails broke 
and Willie rolled over between two potato- 
ridges with the cracker-box on his back. 
The calf kept on as long as a piece of the 
wagon hung to him. The boys pulled 
Willie out of the box, and he crept home, 
crying, completely disgusted with his first 
earthly treasure. 

How often boys, and men too, are disap- 
pointed in their worldly expectations ! But 
I said before, and I say again: “Boys will 
be boys.’’ 


SOMEWHA T ^‘SNAPPISHr 

AN EPISTLE FOR DYSPEPTICS. 


A nd you’d like to have a “snappish” 
letter for the Southern — so you say. * 
Wish I could write one for you, but 
I can’t. I’m not a “snappish” man — not 
when I’m well. Some folks are “ snap- 
pish ” when they are sick. Some preachers 
“snap” too much and too often. “Snap- 
pishness” is not helpful to godliness, does 
not commend religion, never makes the 
family happy. It is an ugly habit, anyhow, 
and yet you want a “snappish” letter. 
Look here ! you’d better mind what you 
ask and from whom you ask. You may 
not know it, but I’m a dyspeptic — a great 
sufferer; rarely see an easy moment; never 
without pain — and you may get what you 
ask for. Say, did you ever suffer from in- 
digestion — from dyspepsia ? It is a peculiar 
disease. It affects other folks more than 
it does you. My dyspepsia does. I’m all 
( 106 ) 


SOMEWHAT “ SNAPPISH. 


107 


»> 


right, but other people get contrary. They 
are mean and hateful. They do all sorts of 
things to vex and worry me. My wife gets 
contrary; my children are mean; my horse 
tips his toe; the chickens crow for spite; 
the Church won’t do right — needs scolding; 
the wind blows the wrong way; my pen lets 
down too much ink ; every thing and every- 
body gets wrong — all but me : Tm all right. 
Now when one of these spells comes on 
me, I could “ snap ” you a “ snappish” let- 
ter with a gusto, and I might “ snap ” you 
up, too, if you got in my way. If I get too 
“snappish” about home, my wife puts me 
to bed and “honeys” me up till I hate my- 
self and almost wish I was dead and out of 
the way. I see other folks in these states, 
and I’m sorry for them, I am. They suffer. 
They brace themselves, grit their teeth and 
say, “ I won’t ! ’’—but they do. They give 
way, go off, let fly, and “snap” like five 
hundred. It takes a double portion of grace 
for a woman to live peaceably with a dys- 
peptic husband. Dyspeptic women have 
Ugly fits, too. A dyspeptic can’t live peace- 
ably with himself, at times, to say nothing 


io8 


ODD HOURS. 


of living with other folks. He hates him- 
self and loves no one. I was always sorry 
for Carlyle. He was a “fury” when the 
fit was on him. His wife caught it now and 
then — most dyspeptics’ wives do. I never 
knew for certain where my brains were till 
I began to suffer from indigestion. Then 
I found out they were in my stomach, or 
close to it. My brain won’t work when my 
“ gizzard ” is out of order. It won’t. I’ve 
tried to force it, to push it, pull it, hire it, but 
it wouldn’t. It got contrary and stood stock 
still for days at a time. I’ve sat and tried, 
but couldn’t think a thought. Then I’d 
turn round and go over it all again, but it 
wasn’t there. “To be and not to be,” all 
at the same time, is awful. It is enough to 
make a man “ take arms against himself and 
fly from the ills he has to those he knows 
not of.” Then, too, I don’t realize that I 
have a heart until my digestion gets hoisted. 
Then my heart gets, wrong and annoys my 
life out of me. Everyway I turn, it keeps 
thump, thump, thumping until I almost wish 
I didn’t have a heart. When I have a bad 
spell, I can’t think, can’t read, can’t talk, 


SOMEWHAT “ SNAPPISH.” ‘ 


109 

can’t preach, can’t pray. I try to pray, but 
I can’t. My soul seems to have collapsed 
inside of me. It won’t just go out and up 
until it touches God. This used to bother 
me greatly. I thought: “Well, well, God is 
clean gone from me forever.” The deep, 
black darkness of despair would settle down 
upon me. O it was awful! I’ve gotten 
over that now. I’ve been over it for years. 
When I get so I can’t pray now, I just hold 
on and wait. I stand still. I know by ex- 
perience, oft repeated, that God is right 
there, close by me, though I can’t see him, 
can’t feel him, can’t hear him. It is faith 
in the dark, faith without sight, without feel- 
ing, without hearing; faith alone. When 
the mists lift, God is right there — right where 
he was when the darkness fell on me. He 
is with me even when I know it not. 

People often ask, “Are you always hap- 
py?” No, I am not; but I am always con- 
fident, and have been, thank God I for many 
years past. I’m often miserable, suffering 
in body and mind; but my heart is fixed, O 
bless God ! my heart is fixed. God is fixed • 
too. He doesn’t move an inch from me, not 


no 


ODD HOURS. 


an inch. He is truer to me than I am to 
him. He sticks closer to me than I do to 
him. In this faith I stand. 

Now, my brother, Tve opened -my heart 
to you, and told you who I am, what I am, 
how I suffer, what fits come over me, my^ 
moods and “ snappish” spells, and the dan- 
ger you are in when you ask for a “ snap- 
pish ” letter for your paper. Who told you 
I was “snappish” and wrote “ snappish” 
letters? Did you mean to offend me, to 
poke fun at me, to twit me with my trouble? 
You can give this letter to your dyspeptic 
readers. God bless you! 


“ UNCLE Die KEY r 


iCKEY Beard was a character in his 



day. He was a short, thick, fat man 


I J His eyes were blue and his hair 
as black as a crow. He was never well 
enough to work, and never too sick to eat. 
His appetite was always in good order, par- 
ticularly on “ state occasions.” I would 
not say that “Uncle Dickey,” as he was fa- 
miliarly called by the boys, was lazy; but 
then he was always tired, too tired to do any 
kind of work, except to make an indifferent 
pair of shoes now and then ; and occasion- 
ally he would bottom a chair, if some one 
would rive the splits for him. This was 
about the extent of his labors during the 
twelve or fifteen years that I knew him. 

One thing Uncle Dickey could do: he 
could talk. The boys said “ he could out- 
talk a whole camp-meeting.” There was 
no end to his talk. He monopolized the 
conversation everywhere he went. When 


( 111 ) 


II2 


ODD HOURS. 


he began a story, there was absolutely no 
end to it. He took off after every side issue 
that came up, and then branched off on the 
various streams of the side issues, until he 
frequently forgot entirely the thread of his 
own stories. If some one suggested to him 
where he left off, he would thank them most 
graciously, and then begin a tirade on his 
treacherous memory, which, like all his other 
stories, was endless. I do not now remem- 
ber to have heard the conclusion of any of 
the “thousand and one” narrations Uncle 
Dickey began. His name soon became a 
by-word. Whenever a boy or girl began to 
spin a “yarn” too long, some one would 
say: “Now, Uncle Dickey, come to a 
point.” The fact is, all of Uncle Dickey’s 
talk was pointless. ' If he ever made a 
point, I was too obtuse to see it; though I 
ought, in justice to the old man, to say that 
I never knew him after I was twenty years 
old. 

Uncle Dickey was a great camp-meeting 
man; in fact, he liked any meeting where 
there was plenty of “good eating” to be 
had at other people’s expense. Some peo- 


UNCLE DICKEY. 


iC 


> > 


II3 


pie eat to live, but it always seemed to me 
that Dickey Beard lived to eat and talk. 

I don^t know, and can’t say, what Uncle 
Dickey thought, but judging from his talk, 
he thought the camp-meetings would be 
failures if he were not there. In his way he 
had done a “powerful sight” of work for 
the Church in his day, in “Alabam” and 
“ Massasip.” He said that the Church owed 
him a support in his old days for the work 
he had done when he was young and stout. 
During all the years that I knew him he 
got more out of the Church than the Church 
got out of him. The old man had the 
“rheumatiz,” as he called it, through all 
the last years of his life. The “ gout ” was 
not fashionable then in Mississippi. Per- 
haps it was wicked, but I used to think 
it. would have been a good thing if. the 
“rheumatiz” had struck the old man’s 
stomach instead of his legs. 

Uncle Dickey had to be hauled in a cart 
everywhere he went. Walk, he could not, 
or would not; and he could not mount a 
horse. Whether invited or not, he went to 
every corn-shucking, log-rolling, house- 
8 


ODD HOURS. 


II4 

raising, barbecue, quilting, or wedding with- 
in five or six miles of his home. If it was 
known there was to be any thing to eat, 
Dickey Beard was always on hand. He 
knew exactly how to do every thing, but was 
not able to do any part of the work. 

Uncle Dickey was an amiable man, not 
at all sensitive, particularly before dinner; 
though I have known him to be “huffy” a 
few times in the afternoon. If he ever had 
any feelings, the points had been broken off 
of them before I knew him. 

The last time I ever saw the old man was 
at a gin-house raising. He was hauled to 
the place in his cart, and lifted out, and set 
on a block of timber near by, where he 
could talk, and give advice to the workmen, 
which he was always free to do on such oc- 
casions. At that time he had not walked a 
step “ for nigh on to six years,” according 
to his own testimony. 

The gin-house, a large one, had been 
framed on the ground, and was to be set up, 
the plates put on, and the braces put in. 
After this was done, the frame was prized 
up so rocks could be put under the posts. 


ii 


UNCLE DICKEY. 




II5 


Luckily or unluckily, I don’t know which, 
one of the prize poles slipped and the frame 
jumped two or three feet toward where Un- 
cle Dickey was sitting. The wrenching of 
the joints made a fearful noise; and, to add 
to the confusion, the twenty men present 
each said, “Look out! ” “ Get out of the 
way I ” “ Take care I ” or something of that 
kind. Uncle Dickey jumped to his feet, 
ran twenty steps, and placed his hands on 
the fence and sprung over like a boy of 
sixteen. Peal after peal of laughter went 
up from that crowd, and might have been 
heard for a mile or more. Uncle Dickey 
would have laughed too, but his heart was 
in his throat choking him nearly to death. 

After dinner, when the old man had got 
his load, he fell back into his old ways and 
was as lame as ever. How he died I never 
knew; but one of the boys who lived near 
him said, when I asked about the old man’s 
death : “ Well, he ate his last meal, and was 
spinning his last ‘ yarn,’ but before he fin- 
ished it he died.” 

I do wish he had finished that one. Some 
people never finish any thing. 


A STUBBORN BOY, 


ERNANDO — we Called him “ Fud ” for 



short, though mother didn’t like for 


us to have nicknames — was the con- 


trariest boy when he got his head set I 
ever saw. It didn’t matter how trivial a 
thing it was, if he took a notion he wanted 
to have his own way. 

He was the only one in a family of four 
who had a knack at making money and 
holding on to it. The other boys were fond 
of books, and cared little for money; but 
Fud loved money, and cared nothing for 
books. This disposition was born in him. 
He was a good boy to work — slow in his 
movements, but steady as a clock, and as 
persevering as he could be if he saw a 
chance to make a dime. At odd times and 
on rainy days, when the rest of us were por- 
ing over books, Fud was always engaged 
making a basket or cobbling up a pair of 
shoes. He had but little to say at any time 


A STUBBORN BOY. 


II7 

or on any subject, always preferring soli- 
tude to company. Fud was as patient as 
an ox, and would endure any amount of 
abuse before he got mad ; but when he did 
get stirred, he was revengeful, implacable, 
and uncompromising as a boy could well be. 
He never forgot an injury, and rarely made 
friends with an enemy. The other boys 
were quick and flew off of the handle in a 
minute, and got in a. good humor in a short 
time. Mother switched all of us frequently 
except Fud. She rarely ever took the rod 
to him. It looked like partiality to us, but 
then it may have been because mother saw 
a real difference in her boys. The kind of 
government adapted to three of us might 
not have been worked well in the case of the 
fourth son. 

Mother was an early riser. She always 
had breakfast by candle-light both summer 
and winter. She did not have many rules 
in her family government, but the few she 
had were as inflexibly administered as the 
laws of the Medes and Persians. One of 
her rules was that the boy who was not up, 
washed and dressed, by the time breakfast 


ii8 


ODD HOURS. 


was announced did not get any. She said: 
“If I can cook a meal, it is as little as you 
boys can do to be ready for it.” We gen- 
erally got ready in good time. 

One spring morning in the month of May, 
when we were busily engaged in plowing 
over the crop on our little farm, brother 
Fud lay late, and stalked into the dining- 
room and flopped down to the table when 
the meal was half over. Mother looked at 
him and asked, “Are you well, my son?” 
“I am,” said Fud gruffly. “Have you 
washed your face and hands? ” asked moth- 
er pleasantly. “No, ma’am,” responded 
Fud. “ Well, my son,” said mother kindly 
but firmly, “get up and go away. You 
know the rule. It must be obeyed.” Fud 
stamped out of the room as if he would run 
his shoe heels through the floor, and he 
struck up a big whistle as soon as he got 
into the yard. Mother looked grieved, and 
said: “Let him alone; he’ll come to his 
milk by and by.” 

Fud caught old Kit and went to plowing 
as large as life, whistling “ Old Dan Tuck- 
er ” as loud as he could. I never knew 


A STUBBORN BOY. II9 

brother to whistle so much before in one 
morning. Whistling was not his forte any 
way. When I got to the field, he was in a 
jolly mood — quite an uncommon thing for 
him. I said nothing about what had taken 
place at breakfast, nor did brother till about 
ten o’clock, when he said: “Mother thinks 
herself mighty smart, but I will show her a 
thing or two before I am done.” “Yes,” 
said I. “ Fud, mother is not very smart, but 
she is good and as stiff as steelyards when 
she sets her head.” “ I am as stiff as she 
is, I thank, you, 'sir,” said brother snap- 
pishly. I made no reply. We plowed on, 
but Fud quit whistling. Hunger had begun 
to tell on him. Hungry people are not gen- 
erally good-humored. When the dinner- 
horn sounded, we took out and went to the 
lot and fed our horses, and then went to 
dinner. From some cause brother was late 
coming to the table. After the blessing was 
asked, he came in with a scowl upon his face 
and threw himself into a chair and said, 
“ Hey, you have a fine dinner to-day ! ” And 
that was true, for mother had biscuit, and 
it was not the day for biscuit either; and 


120 


ODD HOURS. 


then, too, she had an Irish pudding for des- 
sert, a great favorite with us boys, and par- 
ticularly so with Fud. “ Have you washed 
your face, my son? ’’ asked mother, looking 
Fud square in the eye. “No, I haven’t,’’ 
said he quite viciously. “ Well, sir, retire,” 
said mother, with a tone and emphasis that 
meant business. Brother slammed his chair 
back and tramped out of the room, growl- 
ing as he went: “ If I can’t eat. I’ll vow old 
Kit sha’n’t eat.” 

He knew how close the old mare was to 
mother’s heart. 

Mother stepped to the door, and said: 
“ My son, don’t you take Kit out of that 
stable until she has finished eating her 
food.” 

That word was law, and Fud knew it, 
but as soon as he could he went to plowing 
again. I begged mother to whip him and 
make him wash his face and then give him 
his dinner, as we were in a great hurry with 
our work. 

“ No,” she said, “ I’ll let him whip him- 
self this time. His stomach will bring him 
around all right before night, if his con- 


A STUBBORN BOY. 


I2I 


science doesn’t do it. Just let him alone. 
He is a stiff boy, and needs limbering. He’ll 
come in in due time.” 

I was so sorry for Fud that I slipped a 
biscuit out of the safe for him when I start- 
ed to my work, but when I gave it to him 
he threw it as far as he could send it, and 
said: “No, iff can’t eat like white folks. I’ll 
not eat at all. It has come to a pretty pass 
on this place when a boy is forced to work 
like a slave and then starved to death. I’ve 
a good notion to run away. Mother treats 
me like I were a dog.” 

“But,” said I, “brother, you know 
mother’s rules, and you ought to obey them. 
You might as well yield the point now, for 
you will have to do it in the end.” 

“Well, I may,” said he; “but if it were 
blackberry time I’d show her. I’d live on 
blackberries before I’d yield to her foolish 
whims.” 

I said no more. It was no use. The boy 
was blind. We plowed on until about half- 
past three, when brother began to cry and 
fret and yell at old Kit, and then to jerk 
her with the line. We were near the house. 


122 


ODD HOURS. 


and mother came out and said: “ My son, 
you must not jerk that horse.” 

Brother plowed and cried, and cried and 
plowed for an hour, when all of a sud- 
den he stopped and hitched old Kit to a 
corner of the fence, and said: “ Fve got to 
have something to eat, no matter what it 
costs.” 

He went to the spring and washed his 
face, and then went to the house and said: 
“ Mother, I have washed my face, and I 
want something to eat, if you please.” 

“ I am truly glad to hear it, my son,” said 
mother. “ I’ve been sorry for you all day. 
I kept hoping you would come for it, and 
here is your dinner nice and warm, and I’ve 
made you a good cup of coffee. Now, come 
into this room and let us have a word of 
prayer, and thank God for the victory you 
have gained, and then I’ll set out your din- 
ner.” 

I didn’t hear that prayer, but I guess it 
was one of the old sort, short and simple, 
but wonderfully penetrating and unctuous to 
the last degree. Brother came back to his 
work as cheerful as he could be, humming 


A STUBBORN BOY. 


123 


the old hymn, How happy are they who 
their Saviour obey ! ’’ I asked: “Well, Fud, 
did you get your dinner?’’ 

“ O yes, of course I did,” said he; “ and, 
brother. I’ll tell you what it is: after all that 
has been said, and making due allowance 
for mother’s stubbornness, she is the best 
woman in the world. Her prayers always 
dig me up by the roots.” 

Brother was contrary as long as I knew 
him, but he never locked horns with mother 
after this. She broke him in. Most boys 
have to be broken in at some time. The 
sooner it is done the better it is for them. 


^‘OLD KITr 


“ Kit^’ was the best horse that 

J • \ ever trod the soil of Mississippi. 

She was exactly suited to the wants 
of a widow with a family of children. Kit 
was a fine-looking animal, well built, fat and 
sleek, and not so very old, though we called 
her Old Kit as a term of respect. God 
sent her to us in answer to prayer the same 
day Old Jim died, and we loved her for the 
Lord’s sake. She was a much finer horse 
than Old Jim was, more intelligent and 
kindlier every way. Receiving her from 
the Lord in answer to a prayer at the mo- 
ment of greatest need, we took her into the 
bosom of the family at once, and gave her 
the best we had. If mother cooked a cake. 
Old Kit always got a part of it, no matter 
how small a slice mother dished out to us 
boys. I think she was as fond of cake as 
any boy I ever saw. 

She was a dark bay, with black mane and 
( 124 ) 


OLD KIT. 


6( 


> 7 


125 


tail. The right side of her head and half 
her face were milk white, as were her right 
hind leg and hip. Her right eye was glassy, 
nearly blue, while her left eye was as nearly 
black as a horse’s eye gets to be. A kind- 
lier-looking eye was never put into a horse’s 
head, while her countenance was expressive 
of benevolence in large measure. The fact 
is, her face was half human, and she had 
sense just like folks. She understood near- 
ly every thing we said to her; and when she 
did not catch the meaning of what we said, 
she seemed just as sorry about it as she 
could be. I think Old Kit always did her 
best to do exactly what we wanted her to 
do. She made mistakes sometimes, but 
she always corrected them as soon as she 
could. I don’t think she did a single vicious 
or wicked thing during all the years the 
Lord let us keep her. We always prayed • 
for Old Kit at our family altar both night 
and morning. I can’t help thinking that 
God made her so good in answer to prayer, 
and somehow I keep thinking I’ll see Old 
Kit in the better world grazing on the green 
sward that lines the banks of the river of 


126 


ODD HOURS. 


life. If she should be there, I am sure she 
would know me the moment I called her 
name; and there is no friend of my early 
days that I would be more rejoiced to see 
than I would to see that faithful beast. 

One summer morning, when the weather 
was exceedingly hot, mother was behind 
one of my little brothers on her way to 
class-meeting, and Old Kit, by some mis- 
chance, stepped on a stick and it flew up 
and snagged her fatally in the flank. Moth- 
er and brother got the poor beast under a 
gin-house near by, and came home on foot 
to tell the sorrowful tale. It was a sad day 
in our house, as sure as you are born. 
Mother said she thought the poor brute 
would die, but we 'must do all for her we 
could, and pray earnestly to God for her 
while she lived. If ever a horse got the 
benefit of fervent prayer, I think Old Kit 
did. I did not see then, and don’t see now, 
why the effectual fervent prayer of a right- 
eous man would not avail as much for a sick 
horse as for a sick man. God careth for 
oxen as well as for men. We made mention 
of Old Kit in our prayers, and we prayed 


OLD KIT. 


n 


» ) 


127 


oftener while she was sick than we were ac- 
customed to do before. We boys carried 
corn and fodder, oats and meal to the poor 
animal during the four days she lived ; but 
she could not eat. We also carried her 
good, fresh, clean water; and she drank 
heartily, and seemed so thankful for it. It 
would have done your soul good to have 
seen how glad the poor brute was when we 
went to see her, particularly early in the 
morning after a dark, lonesome night. She 
couldn’t say a word, but then she whinnied 
sp affectionately, and turned her head to 
the sore place on her side, and looked at us 
so beseeching^,^ I think she knew how 
hard we were trying to do something for 
her; I know I never saw a human being 
that seemed to appreciate kindness more 
than Old Kit did. She knew us so well, 
and had worked for us so long, and had 
been with us so much that she had grown 
to be like folks in many of her ways. The 
assimilating power of love had, it seemed, 
worked a change in her animal nature. She 
leaned lovingly and hard to every gentle 
stroke we gave her while she was sick, and 


128 


ODD HOURS. 


always seemed to rest easier when one of 
us had her head in our arms. The power 
of human tenderness and sympathy is a 
wonderful thing even on a horse. It seems 
to be the golden gate-way to every thing that 
has a heart. 

Old Kit grew worse and worse, and at 
the close of the fourth day she died; but 
she died without the struggles so common 
to brutes iri their last moments. We were 
glad of this, and we had prayed for it. It 
would have been very painful to have seen 
her die hard. 

Some negro men came with a wagon and 
a great chain to haul her to the bone-yard, 
and they were very rough about it. We 
warned them to handle her tenderly, but 
they wouldn’t do it. They did not know, 
or knowing did not care, how good and kind 
and true the poor brute had been. 

We boys went down and held a funeral- 
service over her remains. She was entitled 
to a Christian burial, if ever a horse was. 
A more genuine or touching funeral was 
never held. Tears flowed freely on Old 
Kit’s grave. We made a wreath and a 


OLD KIT. 


129 


«( 


y> 


cross of wild flowers, and left them on her 
body as a last memento of the affectionate 
regard in which she was held. She had a 
spirit of some sort — a good one, I know — 
but whether it was an immortal spirit or not 
I cannot say; but I would be glad to know 
that Old Kit enjoyed another and a better 
mode of existence than she had in this world 
of sin and toil. 

9 


‘‘UNCLE JArr 


U NCLE Jay Harland was a rare man 
in his day. He was as independ- 
ent as a wood-sawyer in a hun- 
dred-foot pine, a thousand miles from the 
woodman’s ax. He thought for himself, 
and said what he thought, regardless of the 
opinions of other men, be they great or 
small. He was purely original in every 
thing he did or said. He patterned after no 
man, living or dead. Fortunately, he was a 
man of uncommon, good, hard, horse sense, 
as the saying goes; and, better still, he was 
a man of deep, constant, uniform piety, al- 
ways ready to give a reason for the hope he 
had in him. By common consent every- 
body, both old and young, black and white, 
called him “ Uncle Jay;” and why not? 
for he made himself the friend, if not the 
kinsman, of every man he met. His heart 
seemed to be as largfe as his body, and 
that was immense — much larger every way 
( 130 ) 


“UNCLE JAY. ’’ 1 31 

than the average run of men in this coun- 
try. 

Uncle Jay was the soul of honor. He 
hated a little thing or a mean thing with 
an inveterate hatred. Truth and truthful- 
ness had an abiding habitation in his inward 
parts. His word was his bond. He would 
not have swerved an inch to have saved his 
own life or the lives of all his kith and kin. 
If my memory is not at fault, Uncle Jay grew 
to young manhood in Maury county, Tenn., 
not far from Columbia, in a region fa- 
mous for the fertility of its soil. About the 
time he gained his majority he, like the 
prodigal son, took the portion of goods that 
fell to him and moved to Walker county, 
Ala., and invested in a wide breadth of 
level pine land known generally as a “pine 
slash.” It was at once intensely amusing 
and absorbingly interesting to hear Uncle 
Jay, in his own original and quaint way, re- 
cite this chapter in his early experience 
with the world. He told it all over with 
minute exactness and with the solemnity and 
gravity becoming the pulpit, while the list- 
ener was convulsed with laughter at the in- 


132 


ODD HOURS. 


imitable touches of humor, both in the mat- 
ter and manner of the dear old man’s story. 
He never saw, or seemed to not see, anything 
amusing in what he said. He had an im- 
pediment in his speech — a peculiar impedi- 
ment, such as I never knew before, but it 
was as original and as interesting as the man 
himself. It could not be transferred to pa- 
per with any degree of accuracy, and the 
very best mimics made “ a poor out” imi- 
tating the good old man’s peculiarities of 
manner. 

He said, in substance : “ I left Tennessee 
and moved to Alabama because I was a 
fool and thought I had more sense than my 
daddy. Most boys think they are smarter 
than their daddies till they learn in the 
school of experience that they are fools, as I 
did. I bought that pine land because it was 
level, and I thought it would make a pretty 
farm — one over which I could look from my 
cabin door. I never once thought of the 
nature of the soil. Indeed, I did not know 
but all kinds of soil were as good as that on 
my daddy’s farm. I’d never seen any pine, 
and my niggers were as big fools as I was — 


“ UNCLE JAY.” 


133 


they’d never seen any pine either. It was 
a rainy, drizzly, cold day when we landed 
at the cabin on my new farm, or rather 
where I was going to open my farm. I told 
the niggers to make on a fire, and there was 
no wood, saving a big pile of rich light- 
wood at the gate. The fool niggers, who 
had as little sense as their master, brought 
in great loads of that pine, and piled it on 
just as they would oak or hickory up in 
Tennessee. The grease ran out of it, and 
it took me and the niggers the hardest kind 
of work to keep the house from burning up. 
Well, I sat there and thought what a good 
time I’d have burning up the logs on the big 
new ground I meant to clean up right away. 
You see I was such a fool I didn’t know 
there was any difference between the burn- 
ing of green pine and dry pine, and all this 
came of thinking I was smarter than my 
daddy. Well, me and the boys went to 
work cleaning up a farm, and it was not 
long before we had opened out a wide field. 
The logs were cut and rolled, and I thought 
what a good time I’d have burning them up. 
Pine burned so good anfl the straw was so 


134 


ODD HOURS. 


thick I was afraid I’d burn up my place, so 
I made me some rakes and raked up the 
straw. Then on Saturday I told the boys 
to set the logs afire and let them burn up so 
we could go to plowing early Monday morn- 
ing. I did not work on Sunday myself, but 
I thought the fire could burn that day just 
as well as any other, and have things ready 
for my work on Monday. I’ve quit steal- 
ing time from God since I got religion. It 
don’t pay, nohow. Sunday work is always 
a dead loss. Well, as I was going on to 
say, Sunday morning I got up early and 
looked down toward my new ground to see 
how my logs were coming on, and — would 
you believe it ? — there was just a little Smoke 
curling up from a log-heap now and then 
where there chanced to be an oak or hick- 
ory log in the pile. It looks like a hard 
story, but I had to take my wagon and mules 
and haul wood to burn up those pine-logs. 
Pine beat an}^ timber I ever saw — in the 
house you couldn’t put it out, and in the 
field you couldn’t burn it up. Now all this 
came, as you see, of thinking I had more 
sense than my daddy. 


“UNCLE JAY.” 135 

“ Well, I worked hard, and the first year I 
made nothing; but my neighbors comforted 
me by saying it was a bad crop year. The 
next year I worked still harder, and made 
nothing, or next to nothing; and they said 
that was a bad crop year. The next year 
and the year after I worked harder than 
ever, and made nothing, and they said they 
were bad crop years. By this time my stuff 
was about to get under the hammer of the 
sheriff, all because I thought I knew more 
than my daddy. I was too proud and big 
to go back to Tennessee. The folks would 
laugh at me. I couldn’t stand that. So I 
said, ‘Well, I won’t stay in no country 
where they have four bad crop years in 
succession,’ and I came over here sixty 
miles into the prairie and bought this farm 
on credit. From this on I’m going to 
stay where the mud is deepest, because 
I know the land is the richest. Why, 
the gray-squirrels had more sense than 
I, for they staid over here where the scaly- 
bark hickory grows. Now, I tell you, 
pine sha’n’t grow where I stay. If I find 
a pine bush starting on my farm, I get 


ODD HOURS. 


136 

a grubbing-hoe and dig it up, root and 
branch.’’ 

“Uncle Jay, what have you done with 
your pine land in Alabama?” 

“Why, I am just a-keeping it, and paying 
taxes on it, that my boys may see what a 
fool their daddy was, all because he thought 
he was smarter than his daddy; but then it 
won’t do no good, because my boys will just 
go and play the fool over again just as I did. 
It is mighty hard to teach boys any sense 
by talking to them or showing them things, 
for they will just go along and have their 
own way until sense is beat into them as it 
was into me.” 

The inimitable humor of “Uncle Jay’s” 
manner cannot be transferred to paper. 


UNT ANNIKTr 


O LD “Aunt Anniky” was a real prin- 
cess among the women of her race 
in her day. She was a negro, coal- 
black, with no trace of white blood in her 
veins. As I remember her she was five feet 
two inches high, square-built, broad-shoul- 
dered, and tough as a Mexican mustang. 
Aunt Anniky’s teeth and the white of her 
eyes were the whitest I ever saw, or they 
appeared so in the midst of the broad, black 
back-ground where the Maker had placed 
them. The whites of her eyes were fright- 
ful, in the dim light of a flickering fagot on 
the hearth, at the critical point in one of her 
ghost stories . She could tell them by the hour 
to boys and girls who were fond of stories 
of this kind. Some children have an inordi- 
nate passion for exciting stories. The ex- 
citement comes to be a kind of dissipation, 
rather intoxication, that grows by that upon 
which it feeds. I used to dread these sto- 

( 137 ) 


ODD HOURS. 


138 

ries. I even despised them ; yet, somehow, 
I wanted to hear Aunt Anniky tell them. 
She was a good story-teller. The tones of 
her voice, her gestures, and the expression 
of her face, particularly the cut of her eyes, 
went far toward making a simple story won- 
derfully interesting. I didn’t know it then, 
but as I remember it now. Aunt Anniky was 
a born orator, or actress, if you prefer. 
Every thing about her spoke. I’ve sat and 
shivered for hours at a time over the dying 
embers in the fire-place, the cold chills play- 
ing hide-and-seek up and down my spinal 
column, and “swallowing lumps of noth- 
ing” as big as my fist, while Aunt Anniky 
related a ghost story that made every hair 
on my head stand on end. Some of these 
stories were told over and over, but they 
were always fresh, if not always new. I am 
glad to record that Aunt Anniky always 
took care to show that her ghosts were not 
ghosts after all. 

The old woman loved children, and would 
do any thing to please them, and the chil- 
dren loved her. After my mother. Aunt 
Anniky was the next best woman I knew in 


AUNT ANNIKY. 


139 






my boyhood days. I believe she tried to 
do right in ever}^ thing. She was truthful, 
honest, faithful, and a devout Christian who 
worshiped God in sincerity all her days. 
It was generally understood that Anniky 
could be trusted anywhere, with any thing, 
and under any circumstances. She was 
“as honest as the days were long.” She 
was not an “ eye-servant: ” she did not have 
to be watched at her work. It is true she 
was slow, but then she was sure. Whatever 
she did was well done. What she lacked 
in quickness of motion she made up in 
steadiness of lick. She was always hum- 
ming some low, sweet melody while at her 
work, often breaking forth in strains of sur- 
passing sweetness — at least as I remember 
them. The music Aunt Anniky used to 
make and the snatches of songs she used 
to sing linger yet like an echo flung back 
from some mighty cliff. It seems to me 
now that when I get home memory will re- 
call that voice in the mighty throng of the 
redeemed, who will be giving forth, with 
one accord, praises to the Redeemer of man- 
kind. Aunt Anniky will be there. I shall 


ODD HOURS. - 


140 

see her again. I owe her a debt of love in 
the name of my Lord, and it must be dis- 
charged at the foot of the throne. Many a 
time she has checked my wandering feet, 
told me of the Saviour’s love, and led me in 
prayer at the throne of grace. She was 
black and a slave, but free from the corrup- 
tion and bondage of sin, by faith in the 
Son of God. Her life was the proof of her 
faith . 

Aunt Anniky could not read — did not 
know a letter in the book — but, in first one 
way and then another, she had caught the 
general tenor and spirit of the word of God, 
particularly of the Gospels. Her quotations 
of Scripture could not be relied on, so far 
as the exact words were concerned, but she 
rarely missed the real scriptural import of 
the promises. Somehow there seemed to 
be an inner spiritual apprehension of what 
it should be when she did not know what 
the “good book,” as she called the Bible, 
said. How often I have seen it otherwise: 
the most perfect knowledge of the text, the 
exact words, and total blindness to the spir- 
itual import, in the same individual. The 


“AUNT ANNIKY.’’ I4I 

revealing Spirit is also the best exposition 
of the divine word. 

Aunt Anniky caused me to get the sever- 
est whipping my father ever gave me. In 
a matter where the temptation was strong 
to her to slip she told the truth, and I told 
a lie when the truth would have been bet- 
ter for me. My father was a just man, who 
feared God and despised falsehood. When 
Aunt Anniky found out what was coming 
she wept bitterly, pleaded my cause, and 
offered to take my whipping for me. I 
knew she was innocent, and that I was a 
sinner. This self-surrender of loving inno- 
cence made my crime look blacker than 
midnight. I bore my own punishment, but 
the tears of my proffered substitute left 
gashes in my guilty conscience longer than 
the marks left by the lash on my back. 
Aunt Anniky was a good woman. She is 
dead and in heaven now. I ble§s God for 
her life, her love, her sympathy, and her 
prayers. Fll meet her again in the bowers 
of bliss. 


‘‘AUNT PATSrr 


“ Y\ UNT Patsy” was a royal negro in her 
IsJ day. She was large, fleshy, jolly- 
i 1 hearted, good-humored, patient, 
and as black and almost as glossy as a crow 
in the spring of the year. Aunt Patsy could 
beat the world cooking, or I thought so 
when I was a boy. Her ginger-cakes were 
absolutely perfect. They were large, fat, 
sweet, well-flavored, slick on top, and cooked 
to a decimal fraction. They were never 
underdone nor overdone. The memory of 
them makes my mouth water till this day. 
Many a time Pve said, “ Carry me back 
to Aunt Patsy’s ginger-cakes again.” There 
are none JJke them in all the earth now, or 
else there has been a revolution, if not a 
revolt, in my taste since m}^ boyhood days. 
At times there will come again a onging 
for that* which we once loved, even if it be 
the onions and leeks of other days. 

Aunt Patsy and I were on good terms, 
( 142 ) 


AUNT PATSY. 


(( 


5 > 


143 


considering the difference in our ages. 
These terms were very intimate about meal- 
time, while the good old woman was work- 
ing off dinner. At least they were intimate 
on my part. The good old negro often 
took advantage of my affection for her, a 
good part of which affection lay nearer my 
stomach than my heart, by having me carry 
in large piles of chips and bark while the 
ginger-cakes were on the way to the oven. 
I earned my part of the first crop of ginger- 
cakes by the sweat of my brow. This crop 
came in once a week, on Saturday, which 
was preparation-day. Saturday was always 
a high day at our house, because Sunday 
was a holy day. It had to be a holy day. 
That was in the plan, the programme, the 
constitution of our family. We never took 
advantage of Sunday for any thing except 
to go to church, and that we had to do on 
foot if it was plowing-time and the horses 
were at work. The commandment said 
nothing about horses not working on Sun- 
day, but mother made it apply to them be- 
cause we had neither oxen nor asses. She 
gave the term “cattle’’ an inclusive inter- 


ODD HOURS. 


144 

pretation. In fact, the Ten Command- 
ments, as she understood them, were far re- 
moved from what we now call “ specific 
legislation..’' God’s Sunday law prohibited 
Sunday pleasure or recreation as well as 
Sunday work; at least mother so under- 
stood it, and I believe she was right 
about it. 

Aunt Patsy was always kind to me, and to 
all children, and to ever^^body, but she was 
especially good to me when I would help 
her with her work. This I was general!}^ 
ready enough to do, for I loved the old 
negro next to my mother. I found, how- 
ever, on close examination, that my interest 
in Aunt Patsy’s work was generally equal 
to the square of my appetite; and if you 
know any thing about boys, their appetites 
are nearly always square all day long. 

I don’t now remember that Aunt Patsy 
ever made but one mistake with me in her 
trades about work — how much I was to do 
for the first and fattest ginger-cake of the 
first round cooked. I am surprised till 
yet that she made that one. In one way 
and another, mainly on the ground of past 


AUNT PATSY. 


it 


j > 


H5 


faithfulness, I got the old woman to pay me 
my ginger-cake before I brought in the 
bark. That was a mistake. She did not 
repeat it. She gave me my ginger-cake and 
sent me out for some bark in a great hurry, 
and I fully intended to go and come quick- 
ly, but, boy-like, I climbed on the fence to 
put that ginger-cake out of the way before 
I picked up the bark. There was a pet ram 
in the lot, and he and I were good friends 
at long range, when I was on a ten-rail 
fence and he on the ground. The fact is, 
“ Buck was bad about butting when his 
dander was up, and it got up frequently. 
He was on good terms with me that day, as 
I was dropping him a bit of my ginger-cake 
now and then. I don’t believe he thought 
I was dividing fairly on that occasion. I 
am sure, if I had been on the ground he 
would have set me aside and would have 
allowed himself the “ lion’s share.” While 
Buck and I were thus engaged. Aunt Patsy 
came waddling out to the wood-pile, mutter- 
ing sullen wrath against that “ triflin’ boy” 
in an under-tone, but loud enough for me to 
hear it all. Her calico bonnet was pulled 
10 


ODD HOURS. 


146 

down well over her face. She began to 
pile her apron full of chips, talking the while 
about that boy, with her head within ten feet 
of Buck and me. I stopped dropping the bits 
of cake to hear what Aunt Patsy had to say ; 
but Buck, not being included in her talk, 
paid no attention to it. However, the cake 
quit coming, and he was bound to resent 
that invasion of his rights; so he made a 
most fearful lunge at Aunt Patsy, and struck 
the old woman square on the head, sprawl- 
ing her flat on her back, with her heels 
high in the air. Buck renewed the charge 
again and again, while Patsy cried “Mur- 
der ! ” at the top of her voice — by no means 
a low voice, either. The whole place turned 
out to the rescue, all but me; I was off of 
the fence, behind the crib enjoying the fun. 
Aunt Patsy forgave Buck in a few days, but 
I ‘don’t believe she fully forgave me for 
years afterward, for she always got mad, or 
talked like she was, when I reminded her 
of Buck and the wood-pile. 

The dear old negro was just as good as 
she knew how to be. She was full of faith 
and the Holy Ghost, and at perfect peace 


“AUNT PATSY.” I47 

with God and mankind when the time of 
her departure came. Her body lies under 
the sod near Pontotoc, Miss., and her soul 
is with the Lord. 


LAP-PA-TUBBT, 


'pTN EFORE the Indians left Mississippi 
for their home in the far West there 
I * J was a cross-roads store in the upper 
part of Chickasaw county, where blankets, 
trinkets, and mean whisky were sold to the 
Indians by a conscienceless sort of white 
man. Here the Indians would congregate 
to drink, fight, and play, though one of the 
company always kept sober to take care of 
those who were drunk. Lap-pa-tubby, an 
old Indian, was a regular dead-beat around 
this whisky-den, and he was always drunk 
when he could beg or buy whisky enough 
to get drunk on. When he began to get 
drunk, he always wanted to smoke, and 
smoke he would if a pipe could be found. 
On one occasion, on a spring day, when 
“ Tubby,” as he was called for short, want- 
ed to smoke, no pipe could be found; yet 
he vowed he would smoke. Some white 
men present began to make sport of him, 
( 148 ) 


LAP- PA-TUBBY. 1 49 

and said: “Tubby, you can’t smoke this , 
time; there is no pipe for you.” 

“ Me smoke anyhow,” said Tubby; and 
with that he ran down to a branch near by 
and cut a cane for a stem, then came back 
to the road near the store and reamed him 
out a pipe in the hard ground in the road, 
bored a hole into it for his stem, and qui- 
etly filled his pipe with tobacco, laid a 
coal of fire on the tobacco, spread him- 
self full-length on his face upon the ground, 
and proceeded with his smoke, greatly to 
the amusement of the by-standers. Neces- 
sity was the mother of invention to this poor, 
drunken red man. 

When Tubby was getting over his drunk- 
en spells, he always went to a Mr. Reid, 
who lived near his cabin, and asked for 
milk to drink. This the family gave him, 
for they were good people, and pitied the 
poor, besotted Indian. One time, when 
Tubby went for milk, all the older mem- 
bers of the Reid family were from home, 
and the mischievous boys beat up some 
chalk, and mixed it with water and filled 
Tubby’s quart tin cup with the mixture. 


ODD HOURS. 


150 

Tubby turned it up and drained the cup be- 
fore he took it from his mouth, when he 
smacked his lips and said, “ Milika ex sho,’’ 
which meant milk all out. This amused 
the boys greatly. Tubby never took milk 
from them again without examining it care- 
fully before he drank it. 

This poor old Indian would not go West 
with his people, but lived and died in his 
cabin under the mulberry-tree not far from 
Mr. Reid’s. This family found him after 
he died, and laid him to rest close to the tree 
where his cabin- stood. In the last day he 
will come up and appear as a witness at the 
bar of God against the white man who, for 
the sake of money, helped to make him 
worse than he was. Under other and bet- 
ter influences he might have been led to 
Christ and made a better man. Lap-pa- 
tubby had a kindly heart, and would do 
any thing in his power to help a white man 
in distress, until he was utterly and hope- 
lessly debased by hard drink. Then he was 
as perfectly worthless as human beings ever 
get to be. The demon drink is just as de- 
basing and demoralizing to the Indian as to 


LAP-PA-TUBBY. 


I51 

the white man. None but an enemy of 
God and man would sow the seeds of this 
fearful evil among men. It brings no good 
to any one. It is only evil, and that con- 
tinually. 


‘‘UNCLE BURTU 


“T TNCLE Burt” was an original man 

I • 4 in his day. He came up in the 
midst of hard conditions among 
the mountains of North Carolina. He 
moved to Mississippi at an early day, and 
settled on a lovely spot among the spurs 
abutting on Bull Mountain Creek, in the 
eastern part of Itawamba county. Here 
he made a competent support and reared a 
large family. 

Uncle Burt was a peculiar man phys- 
ically, mentally, and morally. He was less 
than five feet high, stoop-shouldered, and 
when on foot moved in a kind of dog-trot, 
and on horseback in a gallop. His head 
was small and hard, and judging by the 
usual signs, not overly full of brains. His 
voice was a nasal, whining twang, with a 
peculiar hitch in it when talking. He al- 
ways used “ nor ” in place of “ than.” 

Uncle Burt was a wicked man, very pro- 
( 152 ) 


UNCLE BURT. 


153 






fane, and he would get drunk every time he 
went to town, and he got there generally 
once a week, and on court and muster days 
oftener. When drinking he was quarrel- 
some and always spoiling for a fight. His 
diminutive form and stalwart rage made a 
most ridiculous-looking team when hitched 
up together. Fortunately, he lived at a time 
when a fisticuff was the fashionable way of 
settling disputes. Men were not walking 
arsenals then, as they are now. 

Notwithstanding all this. Uncle Burt was 
a great friend to the preachers, and would 
have them about his house, and he was a 
regular attendant at church. It was no un- 
common thing to hear him respond ‘ ‘Amen ’ ’ 
heartily during prayer in church or in his 
own house. He was particularly strong in 
responses when the petitions were for him- 
self or his family. He opened his whole 
heart to the preacher, acknowledged his sins, 
canfessed his weaknesses, and abused him- 
self without stint for profanity and drunk- 
enness, and in two minutes he would be in 
the horse-lot among the negroes, cursing 
like a sailor. After a volley of oaths. 


ODD HOURS. 


154 

such as one rarely hears, he would say: 
“ Lord, forgive me ! What a fool I am for 
swearing! ” The old man was the bond- 
slave of two bad habits. They held him 
with a sort of death-grip. I believe he would 
gladly have cut loose from both of them, 
but he was led captive by the devil at his 
will. I often tried to show him how God 
could restore lost manhood in the new birth, 
and give him power by the Spirit both to 
will and to do the right thing ; but all of that 
was beyond the old man’s ken. He real- 
ized his own insufficiency, but he could not 
or would not trust the sufficiency of God. 
As he saw the matter, power was gone, and 
there was nothing left for him to do but to 
drift with the tide, and finally leap the cata- 
ract and plunge into perdition headlong. 
The hand of Christ, man’s Helper and Sav- 
iour in extremity, was held out to him, but 
in vain. He would not lay hold on Christ. 

Often, after a season of excessive profan- 
ity in the lot at feeding-time, he would come 
bustling into the house, roll out the center- 
table, put his Bible and hymn-book on it, 
and say: “ Brother Gilderoy, draw up and 


UNCLE BURT. 




5 > 


155 


have prayer with us; breakfast is nearly 
ready. Put it in strong, my brother, for we 
are an awful set here.” 

When I would implore God to change his 
heart and to help him to quit his evil ways, 
he would say: “Lord, do; I am a fool. 
Thou knowest I am.” Many a time the 
tears would rain down his withered cheeks, 
but he would go out among the hands and 
go to swearing again. This case puzzled 
me greatly then, for I was a mere boy, on 
my second circuit. Uncle Burt was an 
ignorant, unlettered, wicked man, with a 
kindly heart and an exceedingly impulsive 
nature. 

Once he was at church during a gracious 
revival of religion, when there was a great 
deal of excitement. At the close of one of 
the services, when mourners were called for. 
Uncle Burt got up from near the door, and 
hobbled (for he was lame then) up in front 
of the pulpit, and with considerable emo- 
tion said : “ Brother Thacker, put me down 
a scholar and a half. I would kneel, but 
Fve got a boil on my knee; so now I can’t 
get down.” 


ODD HOURS. 


156 

Friends had good cause to believe the old 
man was at last enabled to lay hold on 
Christ by faith, and that he found a home in 
heaven when called away from this world. 
The few last years of his life were spent in 
comparative freedom from his “ besetting,” 
dominating sins. 

This case, more than any other I ever ^ 
knew, showed me the great value of early 
religious training, and the importance of re- 
membering Go(Tin the days of one's youth. 
From it, too, I learned the danger and dom- 
inating power of evil habits. A bad habit 
is a relentless and merciless tyrant. It soon 
becomes inwrought with the fiber of one’s 
being. “The Man Wonderful” is a pris- 
oner and a bond-slave of hell “ in the House 
Beautiful.” 


‘^OLD bright:^ 


“ LD Bright’' was a large white 
I . \ ox, with long, wide-spread horns. 

He was amiable and well-disposed 
under the yoke, but as soon as the yoke 
was off of his neck he was the worst break- 
fence in all the land. He belonged to Mr. 
Jones, a neighbor of ours when we were 
small boys. Mr. Jones thought, or seemed 
to think, he was under no obligation to keep 
the old ox out of anybody’s field but his 
own. 

Old Bright was particularly mean about 
breaking into corn-fields about the time 
roasting-ears were ripe. The smell of corn 
in that stage seemed to render him oblivious 
to all moral obligations. Indeed, his capa- 
cious stomach was his only care. If Bright 
once got a taste of green corn, it was next 
to impossible to keep him out of that field. 
If he had jumped the fence it would not 
have mattered so much, but with his horns 

( 157 ) 


ODD HOURS. 


158 

he would throw it down till he could step 
over it, and in this way he would turn in 
whole droves of cattle. 

Old Bright was the dread and terror of the 
whole neighborhood. He was particularly 
provoking to mother and her boys, because 
our little farm lay along-side of Mr. Jones’s, 
and we were nearer the troublesome ox 
than any one else. We kept good fences, 
for timber was plentiful, and the country 
was new, and good fences were the rule. 
Ours was ten rails high, and staked and 
ridered on all sides, but Old Bright threw 
it down whenever he got ready. 

Mother often sent word to Mr. Jones 
about the mischief his ox was doing, but he 
generally said with an oath: “I cannot 
keep him out of my field, and how do 3^ou 
expect me to keep him out of yours? ” 

Finally, mother sent to Mr. Jones to 
know what the ox was worth, as she intend- 
ed to buy him and kill him; but Mr. Jones 
would not sell at any price. She then sent 
him word that she would have him killed 
and pay for him according to law. 

That night Old Bright was in the field 


OLD BRIGHT. 


it 


j > 


159 


again. He rarely or never broke in in 
daylight — night was his time for mischief. 
In this particular he manifested the same 
moral obliquity common among bad men 
and bad boys. After filling himself with 
corn, he commenced licking salt at the rear 
end of the smoke-house. The thumping of 
his horns woke mother, and she roused me 
and told me to get my gun and shoot that 
old ox. My gun was a smooth-bore, single- 
barrel shotgun. I put in a good charge of 
powder, and was about to ram down a load 
of buckshot, when m3' heart failed me. I 
went to the safe and cut off a good load of 
fat bacon, and sent that home in my gun on 
top of the powder and next to it. The 
moon was shining brightly, and the ox was 
white, and these combined to give me a 
good shot. When I pulled the trigger a 
stream of fire as long as my arm struck Old 
Bright on the left shoulder, and the blaze 
went along his side to the root of his tail. 
It roused the old ox from his meditations, 
and sent him bellowing and blowing through 
the corn as if a nest of hornets had been 
turned loose upon him. He mowed a path 


l6o ODD HOURS. 

through the corn to the nearest part of the 
fence toward the house, and ran through 
it, scattering the rails as if they had been 
straws. 

We had no trouble with Bright for a few 
days, and we hoped this modest hint would 
give him a dislike to the place, but it did 
not. Pretty soon Bright was again thump- 
ing his horns against the back end of the 
smoke-house, where he came to get salt to 
season his supper of green corn. 

“ Now, my son, you load that gun and be 
sure to put in buckshot, and kill that ox if 
you can,’’ said mother, in a commanding 
tone; but my heart failed me again, and I 
rammed down a fair handful of squirrel- 
shot. With these I sprinkled Old Bright 
from end to end, but on the right side for a 
change. At the crack of the gun Bright 
tumbled over from sheer fright, and mowed 
another path through the corn, and ran 
through the fence again, and on across the 
lane and through Mr. Jones’s fence into his 
owner’s field. I was afraid to tell mother 
what kind of shot I had used. 

The next morning mother told me to 


“ OLD BRIGHT.’’ l6l 

go over and tell Mr. Jones that I had shot 
Old Bright, and that if he was dead, 
or seriously injured, she would pay the 
damages. 

I took my gun, thinking I might kill a 
squirrel as I went through the creek bottom 
that lay between our homes. I found Mr. 
Jones in the house with his wife and daugh- 
ters. I stopped at the door-steps and in- 
quired: “Mr. Jones, have you seen Old 
Bright this morning?” 

“Yes,” he answered. “Why?” 

“ Well, I shot him last night, and mother 
told me to come over and tell you, and to 
say that if he were damaged she would pay 
the bill.” 

With that Mr. Jones flew into a .great 
rage, and swore he would whip me within 
an inch of my life, and took down his cow- 
hide and started for the door. I backed 
about twenty steps and cocked my gun and 
brought it half-way to my shoulder, and 
said: “Now, Mr. Jones, I did what mother 
told me to do, only I ought to have killed 
that old ox, for he has destroyed more corn 
for us than he is worth ; but if you attempt 
11 


i 62 


ODD HOURS. 


to hit me with that cowhide I’ll blow a hole 
through you sure.” 

I stood stock still with my gun in that po- 
sition for some ten minutes, while Mr. 
Jones raved and swore at a dreadful rate. 
I said not a word. At last Mr. Jones said: 
“You little fool you, I believe you would 
as soon shoot me as not; put down that gun 
and come in till after breakfast, and I’ll go 
over and see your mother.” 

He tossed his cowhide into the house, 
and I set my gun down by a tree and went 
in and ate breakfast with the family. We 
talked over the matter pleasantly, when Mr. 
Jones said: “Well, Bright is provoking to 
me and to my neighbors, and I will put 
him up and fatten him and kill him for 
beef.” Which he did. 

Mr. Jones was a good-humored, clever, 
dissipated, careless, wicked man, hot-tem- 
pered at times, but reasonable and kind- 
hearted when he had time to cool down. 

When I told mother about presenting my 
gun and threatening to shoot Mr. Jones, 
she came near whipping me soundly for 
it. “Now,” said she, “my son, shooting 


OLD BRIGHT. 


(( 


163 


and killing people, except as a last resort to 
save your own life, is exceedingly sinful in 
the sight of God. When you shoot at your 
fellow-man, you shoot at the heart of God, 
for every human life cost the blood of his 
own dear Son. Thou shalt not kill.’’ 

That lesson was ground into me while I 
was young 


A CHRISTMAS LETTER. 


HE Christmases are not half so inter- 



• • esting and exciting to me now as 


1 they used to be when I was a boy. 
Then the Christmas season was at a pre- 
mium, fully one hundred per cent, on the 
face value; but now Christmas is at par, if 
not fully twenty per cent, below. I hardly 
know why this annual festival has come to 
suffer such loss, unless indeed the change 
is in me rather than in the season. My 
own children and the children around me 
are in a fever of excitement and interest 
about Christmas, just as the boys and girls 
used to be in the days long ago, before the 
silver threads began to show in my hair. 
From Christmas to Christmas seemed an 
age when I was a boy, but the years are 
hardly a span long now. Christmas always 
comes before I am ready for it. Time flies 
on such rapid wings that these Christmas 
mile-posts seem to be only a few hundred 


( 164 ) 


A CHRISTMAS LETTER. 1 65 

yards apart. Indeed, the journey Fve left 
behind me appears far longer than that 
which lies before. I’ve crossed the hill-top 
and started toward sunset on the other side. 
Until I reached the summit, I lived in the 
future, but now I’ve begun to recall the 
past. These old memories, though tinged 
with sadness, are as sweet as honey to my 
soul. As I go along the human hand fades 
out and the divine hand comes more promi- 
nently to view in all my past Ifistory. I am 
now ready to say, “ Thus far the Lord 
hath led me on.” 

Well, one of my Christmases — one of the 
most promising I ever had — was spoiled 
by an accident, or a providence, just as I 
reached the point where the fun was to be- 
gin. The accident that happened to me 
then seemed to be a great misfortune, if not 
a curse ; but now I have begun to look at it 
in the light of a gracious providence. 

It happened to me in this way: I was 
about fifteen years old. My mother prom- 
ised me that I might spend the Christmas 
week with some cousins of mine a few miles 
from our home, provided I left her plenty of 


i66 


ODD HOURS. 


wood laid handy for the fire, and husked 
enough corn to feed the stock for a week. 
I never knew corn to husk so easily before 
in all my life, and the wood almost fell to 
pieces of its own accord under the strokes 
of my ax. I told mother what a change had 
come over the corn and wood. She smiled 
and said : “ O yes, my son, I understand it. 
A spur in the head is worth two on the heel, 
anyway.” Mother had a way of making 
quaint remarks like that, which did not seem 
to have much in them at the time, but as the 
years go by they seem to glisten and glow 
with wisdom, like the wisdom of God. 
Mother looked at the corn and the wood, and 
said there was enough of each ; but my heart 
was all mellowed up, so I doubled the meas- 
ure of both, that there might be enough and 
to spare. It is wonderful how full we make 
the measure when we have a heart for the 
work. O the drudgery and burden of work 
when our hearts are not in it ! 

Christmas morning came, and long before 
day I was up and “ rigged ” out in my new 
suit of brown jeans, mud boots with red 
tops, and a brand-new wool hat. I don’t 


A CHRISTMAS LETTER. 167 

think I ever felt finer or better at any period 
of my life. I wanted to get out my shot- 
gun and “ bang '' off a few charges of pow- 
der, as the guns were booming in every di- 
rection; but mother said: “ No, my son, this 
is not the way to commemorate the birth of 
Christ, the Saviour of the world. He is the 
Prince of Peace, and not the god of war.” 
Somehow mother was always more sensitive 
about the honor of Christ and the respect 
due him than about any thing else in the 
world. I thought she was over-sensitive 
then, but time has changed my opinion, so 
that I love my mother more because she 
loved and respected my blessed Lord, and 
stood by his honor in every place. 

After breakfast, when I was growing im- 
patient to be off, mother touched me on the 
arm and I followed her into the side-room, 
to the old hair-covered trunk, the memory 
of which will cling to me through eternal 
years. “ Now, my son, before you go let 
us have a word of prayer.” Heaven fell on 
that spot, as it had often done before, and 
God filled the room with light and love. 
That old trunk was mother’s throne of grace. 


i68 


ODD HOURS. 


where she piled all her heart-aches on the 
heart of God. I still feel like lifting my hat 
when I go into the room where it is. There 
are no old memories so sweet as those con- 
nected with the times and places when and 
where our parents led us to the throne of 
grace. 

With mother’s blessing running down all 
over me, I took the road, on foot, singing at 
the top of my voice, “ What ship is this that 
will take us all home ? ” 

I had gone but little over a mile from 
home when I fell in with some boys and 
girls going out to the woods to gather mis- 
tletoe, a sort of indispensable something in 
the Christmases of my boyhood days. I 
joined the company with great pleasure, as 
Mary, “the girl of my heart,” was among 
the number. I never remember the time 
when I did not have a sweetheart, and I 
hope never to see the day when I will not 
have some particular woman to love. Next 
to grace, a good woman is the best conser- 
vator of good morals in the heart of man. 

Pretty soon we found a large oak, par- 
tially dead, but loaded with mistletoe on 


A CHRISTMAS LETTER. 


169 

every limb. Of course, boy-like, I must 
show my dexterity in handling an ax, and 
more particularly so as Miss Mary was there 
to witness my skill. 

But alas for all human expectations ! the 
second stroke I made, the ax glanced and 
laid my left foot open from the great toe to 
the ankle-joint. The blood poured in tor- 
rents, or such it seemed to be to me just 
then. My Christmas vanished into thin air. 
The girls screamed. The older boys split 
my new boot open from top to bottom. Two 
of them ran for a doctor who lived near by. 
When 1 saw the blood and the great gash 
in my foot, I grew sick and faint. The 
world began to spin round and round, and 
darkness came over me. 

When I came to myself my head was pil- 
lowed on Miss Mary’s lap, and the doctor 
was examining the extent of the injury. His 
calmness was very comforting to me. Pret- 
ty soon he said: “O it is not bad. You 
will be well in six weeks or two months.” 
Some colored men carried me to the house, 
and in a short time the doctor had my foot 
neatly bound up. 


170 


ODD HOURS. 


The doctor furnished a conveyance and 
sent me home. I don’t know that I was 
ever gladder to get home than I was just 
then. Mother’s sad and troubled face was 
more painful than my foot. After all her 
prayers for divine protection, I was at home 
a cripple and a burden to the family for 
weeks and months to come. At the moment, 
to our eyes, God as often seems to be against 
us as for us in the tangled affairs of this life. 
The blessed providence of many untoward 
events is not seen until after there has been 
time enough fo-r his will to be wrought in us. 
We know the sorrow now, but time will 
show us the hand of God after awhile. 

Confined to the house, I fell to reading a 
class of books whose titles only I had known 
for years. The “Memoirs of Carvosso,” 
“ Mrs. Fletcher,” “ Mrs. Ann H. Judson,” 
“Mrs. Hester Ann Rogers,” “Mrs. Har- 
riet Newell,” “ Life of Wesley,” “ Life of 
Adam Clarke,” “ Doctrinal Tracts,” “ Rise 
and Progress of Religion in the Soul,” 
“Pilgrim’s Progress,” and other books of 
like character were read while I was shut 
up in-doors. That was the richest and most 


A CHRISTMAS LETTER. I7I 

blessed Christmas season I ever had in my 
life. I am reaping and enjoying the fruits 
of it till this day. When the spirit of inspi- 
ration falls on me, as it falls on every man 
and woman of God, passages from these 
precious books, read then, come back to 
me with such vividness and power that I 
could almost turn to the page and paragraph 
in the dark. Mother asked God to give me 
a good and happy Christmas, and God 
heard her prayer and answered it in a rich 
blessing that grows sweeter and richer as 
the years go by. Through grace that an- 
swer to prayer will lap over into that end- 
less Christmas coming by and by. Of all 
the Christmases of the past that one far 
overtops all the rest. Providence, provi- 
dence, O the blessed providence of our 
God ! Under the hollow of his hand I am 
safe. Bless God ! 


COLD WEATHER LETTER. 


S UNNY South ! Whew ! No, not now. 
It is cold here — awfully cold. Last 
Friday morning, the 8th of Janu- 
ary, the wind came swift from the north, 
cold as “ krout.” It “ blowed ” and it 
snowed. I backed out from going to my 
quarterly-meeting, twenty miles north-west. 
It’s not often that I back out — not from 
wind, weather, and water. I backed this 
time. Say what you will, but this is pos- 
itively the coldest “ snap” I ever knew in 
Mississippi. 

The thermometer — the thing that regu- 
lates the temperature, or shows how it is — 
went down and down to six degrees below 
zero in Mississippi, it did. Saturday and 
Sunday the sun shone, but it was no use, 
only to give light. It thawed nothing, melt- 
ed nothing. The poor dumb brutes stood 
shivering on the south side of every thing 
that had a south side. Chickens froze on 
( 172 ) 


COLD WEATHER LETTER. 1 73 

the roost. Every thing that could freeze 
froze stiff and hard. I’ve suffered, I tell 
you I have. Fm thin anyhow. Not much 
weather-boarding on my bones — no ceiling 
of fat inside — just the frame with a slight 
covering of skin and clothes. Hunt for the 
north pole! No, sir, not I. The north 
pole has been hunting for me, that’s what 
is the matter, and it came precious near 
finding me, too. It’s in this neighborhood 
somewhere close by. 

I got interested in Prof. Warren’s book, 
“ The North Pole the Cradle of the Human 
Race,” last summer, but not now. The 
Professor can’t get that off on me. It’s a 
theory for “dog-days” in August, but it 
won’t do for zero -days in January. No, 
no, not a bit of it. No garden of Eden, nor 
garden of any kind, could flourish here at 
this time, to say nothing of the north pole 
at anytime. Not as things now are. They 
may have been different then. That was 
before thermometers came in fashion. Peo- 
ple never know how cold it is till they get a 
thermometer. Thermometers help to in- 
crease the sum of human miseries. Many 


ODD HOURS. 


174 

men complain ten times more after they look 
at the thermometer than they did before, 
both in hot and cold weather. Somehow 
the mercury makes hot weather hotter and 
cold v/eather colder. How do you account 
for this? Ask the professors' at the Van- 
derbilt. They know, or they make out like 
they know some things. We common- folks 
take what they say cum grano, or some — 
“ you know.” You ought to have seen my 
wife this cold weather. How she mothered 
up her children, and me, too. I told her 
“ I didn’t know what she’d do if she had a 
houseful of husbands and children . ” “You 
go to grass,” she said; but there was no 
grass to go to, so I staid by the fire. We’ve 
* had a time of it trying to keep the children 
warm. If we had a large family of them I 
don’t know what we would do; we’ve only 
nine, and they have kept us busy. I’m sor- 
ry for poor folks who have many children 
during cold spells like this. We kept a 
good fire all night, and my wife ran round, 
or sent me, to see if the children had the 
cover on them. When I chided her for ex- 
cessive care, she said: “You hush; we’ve 


COLD WEATHER LETTER. 1 75 

no children to lose.” That’s so. We’ve none 
to spare. If we had to give up one, we 
couldn’t say which one. God, who knows 
best, will have to settle that for us when the 
time comes. We’ll try to be resigned to his 
judgment and will. We know he is too 
wise to err and too good to do wrong. In 
this faith we stand, restfully. 

I thought once my wife would take the 
round of all the negro cabins in our part of 
town to mother them up too. She did make 
good warm coffee and sent it to some of the 
old ones. I was glad of that. It did wife 
good, and warmed my own heart. The ne- 
groes are poor like we are. They have few 
comforts — few bed-comforts, even. They 
live in open houses. They are short of 
wood. Some of them are burning up their 
gardens, posts, palings, railings, and all. 
This in the “ Sunny South,” too. The ne- 
groes are improvident — so are children and 
some grown white folks, too. It’s mighty 
hard to be provident on nothing — mighty 
hard. I know. I’ve tried it. When one 
“pinches” here, and “pinches” there, 
and “ pinches ” all around, and “ pinches ” 


ODD HOURS. 


176 

from year’s end to year’s end, there is little 
left to “ pinch ” on when the pinch comes. 
The poor, God’s poor, have suffered this 
cold spell. Some people give the poor 
“ cups of cold water” — mighty cold water 
— but not “ in the name of Christ.” They 
give them “cold shoulder” and “cold 
comfort” too — all cold, mark you. Noth- 
ing hot, not even warm. Nothing is warm- 
er or softer or more softening than a “ cup 
of cold water” given at the right time and 
in the right way. The Lord knew. He 
understood the power of a hearty heart over 
human hearts. “ It is more blessed to give 
than to receive.” Is that so? Christ said 
it. Let’s see, let’s look at that saying of 
our Lord. It is blessed to receive. We all 
know that. We’ve been receiving all our 
lives. Receiving has made us little, mean, 
narrow, selfish, unsympathetic, bigoted, 
craving, avaricious. Giving broadens us, 
widens us, makes us deeper, better, more 
loving, more sympathetic, less selfish, more 
self-sacrificing, and it takes the conceit out 
of us. Giving does good twice, to two per- 
sons, to the recipient and to ourselves. 


COLD WEATHER LETTER. 1*J*J 

Giving, to do good, must be done in the 
name of Christ and for Christ’s sake. We 
must not give expecting the gift in value or 
kind to be returned to us again. This is 
“ swapping,” not giving. Many persons 
call “ swapping” gifts giving, but it is not. 
Give, give freely, give liberally, not grudg- 
ingly; give lovingly, give in the name of 
Christ, give for the love of man, give as a 
means of grace to your own soul, give often, 
give much; never miss a chance to give, 
keep on giving, and your liberal soul will 
be made fat — fat in grace, fat in love, in love 
to God and man, fat in sympathy, fat on the 
“ milk of human kindness,” fat inwardly, 
fat outwardly. You will be led into green 
pastures, beside still waters in fat places. 
The fatness of God will cover you. O for 
the grace of giving ! Receiving has cursed 
us, giving will bless us. Not minimum gifts, 
but maximum gifts. “ It is more blessed to 
give than to receive.” Try it, prove it, 
demonstrate it. We’ve solved one part of 
the problem, now let us solve the other. 

But, Doctor, this is enough for a cold 
day — perhaps too much; so good-by to 
12 


ODD HOURS. 


178 

you. Be warmed, be fed, be clothed, but. 
Doctor, not at my expense, not at any sac- 
rifice on my part ; just be these anyhow, any 
way, and, if you can’t be warmed, fed, and 
clothed, do — ^you vagabond, you — do get out 
of my way and out of my sight. Your looks 
trouble me, worry me; I despise poor, im- 
provident, worthless, thriftless white trash 
any way. Get out! begone! You see my 
human nature has cropped out at last. 


SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 


( SUPPOSE all Christian men and women 
in the world have some things, some 
special events in their lives laid up in 
the archives of memory which they take out 
now and then, and “ponder them in their 
hearts,” as Mary did the things said by the 
shepherds when they came to Bethlehem to 
see the infant child Jesus. These are heart- 
treasures — the real jewels gathered along 
the journey of life. We would not part 
with these precious memories for all the gold 
of California. The remembrance. of them 
is always sweet to us. 

There are two such things in my own 
brief life which come up again and again, 
and they always call forth the devout grati- 
tude of my poor heart to God my Father. 
It may not appear so to others, but to me 
these two incidents are a standing memorial 
of the special providence of God. I believe 
as firmly in the special providence of God 

( 179 ) 


i8o 


ODD HOURS. 


toward his children as I do in the special 
care of a mother for her infant child — in- 
deed, I would sooner doubt the care of a 
mother for her offspring than I would the 
providence of God for those who trust him 
with child-like simplicity. On no subject 
is the word of God so simple, so explicit, 
or so plain as on the subject of divine spe- 
cial providence. “ Not a sparrow falleth 
to the ground without your Father’s care. 
Even the very hairs of your head are all 
numbered.” Thanks be unto God for this 
assurance of his interest in us and his ten- 
der care for us. But to the illustrations. 

In 1867, in the hot weather in July, I con- 
cluded to make a cot so I could rest and 
study under the shade-trees in my yard. At 
the time I was reading some choice books 
on the subject of sanctification and holiness. 
I went down the hill-side and selected a 
piece of timber. It was large and heavy, 
fully as much as I was able to carry to the 
house. The large end of the stick was up 
the hill, at the top of the hill, and the small 
end down the hill. Reason, human judg- 
ment, and practical common sense said: 


SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. l8l 

“Lift the small end, and the timber will be up 
the hill ; the large end will be in front of yoti, 
just as it should be to carry it with the least 
trouble and labor.” I went to the small end, 
which had a small block chipped out on the 
under side, and stooped down and almost 
touched the logs with my fingers, when a 
strange impulse caused me to draw back. 
I hesitated a moment or two, and stooped 
the second time, and, if possible, I came 
still nearer thrusting my hand under the log 
where the place had been cut out, but from 
some cause I drew back the second time. 
I then went to the large end up the hill, and 
took hold of the log and began to struggle 
up with it, when I said to myself in an audi- 
ble voice: “What a simpleton I am for 
lifting here ! I will go to the other end and 
lift it up the hill!” I went and stooped 
down the third time to take hold of the log, 
when something caused me to draw back, 
instantly, promptly, and decisively. With 
that I went to the large end and struggled up 
with the piece of timber, when lo ! under 
the small end where the piece had been 
chipped out there was lying in its coil the 


i 82 


ODD HOURS. 


largest ground rattlesnake I ever saw. Im- 
mediately I went down the hill into a dense 
thicket, and had one of the sweetest private 
meetings with God I ever had in my life. 

The memory of that time and place grows 
sweeter as the years go by. I firmly believe 
that God kept me from putting my hand 
under that log. If God did not do it, then 
who did? I acted contrary to my better 
judgment. Any sensible man, with prac- 
tical experience in lifting, would have called 
me a simpleton for lifting that stick of tim- 
ber as I did. I am not so important that 
God need trouble himself to take care of 
me ; but still I am of “ more value than many 
sparrows/’ or at least God says I ^m, and 
I take his word for it. 

In 1869 I was on my way home late one 
afternoon just after the close of a gracious 
revival of religion at one of the churches 
on my circuit. I was weary from over- 
work, but my soul was happy in God. 
There were indications of a storm. A dark 
cloud was rising in the west, and the forked 
lightnings were playing up and down it, 
while the thunder, in peal after peal, was 


SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 183 

making the ground tremble. There was not 
a breath of air astir, not a leaf rustling. I 
was in a long lane, with not a tree near me 
save one large post-oak that stood in the 
center of the lane some three hundred yards 
in front of me. The lower limbs and half 
the body of the tree were green, but the 
long, straight top, with no limb on it, was 
dead. I was riding slowly and deliberately 
along, my hands on the horn of my saddle 
and my bridle hanging down. I suppose I 
had been along that road more than one 
hundred times — it was only a mile from the 
parsonage. Suddenly this thought came 
into my mind: “What if the dead top of 
that tree were to fall on you as you ride 
under it?” I thought, “Well, I’ll spur up 
and get past it before it falls; ” and then I 
thought to myself, “You may in that way 
get there at the wrong time.” Again I 
thought, “Well, I’ll checkup my horse and 
ride slower ; ’ ’ but this suggested the thought 
that slower riding might bring me into dan- 
ger. So I looked up to God in a single 
ejaculation for divine -.protection, and rode 
along at an even pace, but as I rode under 


ODD HOURS. 


184 

the tree I turned my eyes up toward the top 
of it, and lo ! just as I was fairly under it the 
whole top turned loose and came down with 
an awful crash; but seeing it start, I put the 
spur to my horse and he bounded beyond 
the point of danger. 

Now, I believe God put all those thoughts 
into my heart, and thus called my attention 
to that tree, and in that way he saved my 
life. I never had such thoughts at that tree 
before. Why did I have them at that time? 
If God by his Spirit, or by some good an- 
gel, or some other spiritual agency at his 
command, did not stir these thoughts in my 
mind, then what did? I believe God did it, 
and this simple faith does my soul more good 
than all the speculations of all the wise men 
in "the world. This is another one of my 
heart treasures. Thanks be unto God for it ! 


‘^OLD SOOKr 


“ Sook” lived to be twenty-eight 

f • \ years old. She was blind from the 
time she was two years old. A 
mischievous boy threw a chip at her when 
she was a colt, and knocked one eye out, 
and fever fell into the other eye and put it 
out. Sook was as black as a coal, save a 
small white spot in the center of her fore- 
head about the size of a silver half-dollar. 
A collar mark or two on her shoulders, and 
a few saddle marks on her back, turned 
white as age came on. Fortunately, Sook 
fell into good hands, where she was kindly 
cared for in the way of stable and feed, and 
then she was favored with work because she 
was blind. She was always as fat and sleek 
as a mole. Indeed, she was a fine animal to 
begin with, and care and attention kept her 
at her best. Up to a few months before 
her death she had the spirit and movements 
of a much younger horse. Professed and 

( 185 ) 


ODD HOURS. 


l86 

professional judges of the ages of horses al- 
ways set Sook down at nine or ten years old 
after she had passed her first score. Indeed, 
it is all guess-work about the age of a horse 
after the tenth year is passed. Eight or 
nine years ago seems to have been the fa- 
mous year for colts. About nine-tenths of 
the horses for sale or trade were foaled about 
that long ago — at least such is the case if 
the reports of their ages be true. 

For most kinds of work on the farm Old 
Sook was just as good as any animal that 
could be found. A better or more faithful 
family horse is rarely found in any country 
or at any time. In the absence of eye- 
sight Old Sook’s sense of smell had been 
wonderfully developed in many ways . While 
young, Sook was brought from South Caro- 
lina to Mississippi, then a new country just 
filling up with white people from the older 
States. There were a great many rattle- 
snakes in Mississippi at that time, and Sook 
stood in great dread of them. She knew, 
and those who were well acquainted with 
her knew, when she came into the neighbor- 
hood of one of these venomous reptiles. 


OLD SOOK. 


( i 


> > 


187 


It was impossible to force her into a corner 
where she smelled a rattlesnake. I never 
knew a dog that had a keener scent for 
a rattlesnake than Old Sook had. She 
seemed to care but little for other snakes. 
The people often spoke of a peculiar smell 
about the rattlesnake when angry, but Sook 
seemed to know where they were whether 
angry or not. Whenever she got into the 
neighborhood of one of these reptiles, she 
trembled all over, wanted to run, and snort- 
ed and groaned in a peculiar way. There 
was no mistaking her motions or the noise 
she 'made after one had seen and heard her 
once. Just why Old Sook stood in such 
dread of rattlesnakes I do not know — she 
had never been bitten by one, so far as her 
owner or any of the family knew. Mr. 
Cozby, her owner, said one day, “It is in- 
stinct that makes Old Sook so afraid 
of rattlesnakes;'’ whereupon a little boy 
standing by said, as if an idea had struck 
him: “Uncle John, I think it is the oiif- 
stink of the snake rather than the instink 
of Sook that makes her so ‘ sheer d ' of 
snakes." The laugh that followed puz- 


i88 


ODD HOURS. 


' zled the boy, who did not know what in- 
stinct was. 

It was next to impossible to get Old Sook 
near a ditch or gully of any kind when 
driving her, to the plow, or to a vehicle of 
any kind. She could be led anywhere by 
the bridle or fore top. 

No child or human being ever understood 
the different tones of the human voice bet- 
ter than Old Sook. A gentle word quieted 
her in an instant. An encouraging or as- 
suring word seemed to inspire confidence 
and drive away fear, just as such words do 
in the case of a child. Mr. Cozby did not 
allow Old Sook to be deceived by any one. 
He said: “ If her faith, her confidence, is 
destroyed, then she will be doubly blind and 
entirely useless on the farm.” Doubtless 
many a good animal has been ruined by be- 
ing deceived. They learn enough to know 
when men are telling lies. Many a child 
has been utterly ruined in the same way. 
Children learn more readily than horses, 
and the danger and damage to them is in- 
finitely greater. Children have souls, horses 
have not. The confidence our dumb brutes 


OLD SOOK. 


(( 


7 > 


189 


have in us, in our honor, integrity, and 
veracity, greatly enhances their value to us; 
of how much more importance it is to gain 
and retain the confidence of our fellow-men. 
An angry, sharp word, suddenly spoken, 
went like electricity through every fiber of"' 
Old Sook’s frame. She, wanted to do right, 
tried hard to walk in the right place and 
do the right thing, but a sharp word set her 
to mending matters which in her blindness 
she generally made worse. It was really a 
cruel and unchristian act to speak sharply 
to Old Sook. No human being appreciated 
kindness more than this poor old blind mare. 
Gentle words and gentle ways were like 
balm to her heart — soul, or spirit, if you 
prefer. The same is true of human beings, 
particularly those of the finest mold. 

It was wonderful how many words and 
tones of voice Old Sook understood. She 
could not talk, at least not in English, but 
she understood quite a number of English 
words, and was guided by them. She would 
have learned French or German just as 
readily. Our horses would know much 
more than they do if we took time and pains 


ODD HOURS, 


190 

to teach them. We will pay more attention 
to these things when we reach a higher plane 
of Christian civilization. 

Old Sook understood a large number of 
signs when not a word was spoken . A check 
of the bridle-rein caused her to step over a 
rail or log, or to accommodate herself to a 
sudden rise in the ground. A gentle touch 
on the neck made her change her gait when 
traveling, or the word “ down ’’ gave her to 
understand when she was to descend the 
bank of a creek or any steep place. 

The whole family were in mourning when 
Old Sook died, and they gave her the bene- 
fits of decent Christian burial. Why not? 
She had carried or drawn some one or more 
of the family to church nearly every Sun- 
day for twenty-five years. They could not 
have gone to the house of God but for Old 
Sook or some other horse in her place. 


A CHRISTMAS STORY, 


A way back yonder in the fifties they 
had the Christmases nearly five times 
as far apart as they are now — indeed, 
it was an age from one Christmas to the 
the next, or we boys thought so. ‘‘Old 
Santa,” the children’s best and most ad- 
mired friend, did not then come around 
every year loaded down with good things, 
as he does now. His store-houses were few 
and far between in the early days, particu- 
larly so in countries as new as Mississippi 
then was. His nearest station to our home 
and neighborhood was at Pontotoc, twenty 
miles away. The roads were often very 
bad at that season, and the streams large and 
numerous, and, for the most part without 
bridges, were generally much swollen by 
the winter rains, so that “ Old Santa ” could 
not have made the trip, if he had been in- 
clined to come, as doubtless he greatly de- 
sired to do. 


( 191 ) 


ODD HOURS. 


192 

When he failed to get to our house and 
the houses in our neighborhood, our parents 
always found some good excuse for him 
without in any way impeaching the kindness 
of the old gentleman’s heart. They always 
stood to it to the last that “Old Santa’* 
would have come if it had’ been possible for 
him to do so. It seemed to me, and to the 
boys and girls generally, that he missed 
oftener than he hit. If we had only had the 
fixing of the Christmas festival, we would 
have put it in May or June, when the weath- 
er was fine and the roads good. 

In some way we had gotten it into our 
heads that “ Old Santa ” preferred to come 
in cold weather, when the ground was cov- 
ered with snow or sleet, and the swollen 
streams were frozen over; but this missed 
oftener than it hit in Mississippi. If it 
snowed any all winter long, it was almost 
dead sure not to snow at Christmas-time. 
It was absolutely provoking to have every 
thing go wrong at the most important season 
of the whole year — a season it seemed that 
never would roll around. 

They told us “ Old Santa” preferred the 


A CHRISTMAS STORY. 


193 

snow and the ice, because he traveled in a 
sleigh drawn by fleet-footed reindeer. His 
team could draw a large load then, and they 
could come and go without making any 
noise. They left no sign, either, even when 
snow was on the ground, for I looked for 
tracks many a time. I could find plenty of 
deer-tracks in the snow in the woods from 
a quarter to half a mile from our house, but 
not a solitary print of “Old Santa’s’’ sleigh 
did I ever find. 

Well, as good luck would have it, Christ- 
mas and snow came together in 1850 or 
1851. I will not be precise about the year, 
for a boy’s memory is not to be trusted im- 
plicitly in the matter of dates. I don’t think 
I ever was so glad to see a snow in all my 
life. The outlook for Christmas was ex- 
ceedingly unfavorable the few last, long 
days before it came. • 

It rained in torrents for a week or ten 
days. Coonewaugh, Chiwappa, Tallibou- 
cla, Bougfala, Mubby, Tubby, and Lappa- 
tubby, the larger creeks that lay between 
our home and the several store-houses from 
which “Old Santa” might come, were 
13 


194 


ODD HOURS. 


spread out from hill to hill in roaring tor- 
rents of muddy water. I knew that no rein- 
deer, or deer of any kind, could cross any 
one of these streams. “Old Santa” was 
water-bound, or we were, or both, I didn’t 
know exactly which. The prospect was ex- 
ceedingly gloomy. I had made ♦fully one 
hundred and one big calculations on that 
Christmas, and now the last ray of hope was 
gone. I would have given a kingdom, if I 
had owned it, for the privilege of managing 
the weather for a few days — a week, at 
least. 

The morning before Christmas-day the 
wind shifted suddenly to the north, and in 
a few hours the^ snow and sleet, about half 
and half, regular honiiny snow, came pour- 
ing down in a blinding way. The lower 
the mercury fell the higher my spirits rose. 
As the one contracted the other expanded, 
until they boiled over and spilled out in all 
directions. 

By the middle of the afternoon it had 
gotten too cold to sleet or snow, and every 
thing that could freeze was freezing as hard 
as a bone. If I had made the weather my- 


A CHRISTMAS STORY. I95 

self, I could not have had it more to my no- 
tion than it was. I skipped and hopped 
and jumped and ran and whistled and sung 
everywhere I went. I could do more er- 
rands for mother and do more jobs and do 
them quicker than ever before in my life. 
I was brimful of life and running over. I 
told mother how happy I was. In a serious 
sort of way she said: ‘‘Ah ! my son, a spur 
in the head is worth two on the heel.’’ Ex- 
actly what she meant I did not know, but 
somehow that saying stuck into me and be- 
gan to swell. 

I ran down to Coonewaugh Swamp, about 
a mile away, on the road to Pontotoc, and 
lo ! the wide waste of water was fast freez- 
ing over so “Santa” and his team could 
cross. 

Mother had invited some boys — Thomas 
and Ludlow and Phares — to spend Christ- 
mas-day at our house. They were my 
special friends, and they lived on our side 
of the creek, and could come. The pros- 
pects for the coming day were piled up like 
mountains before me. There was the snow- 
balling, if the sleet and snow mixed would 


ODD HOURS. 


196 

ball, the. fat turkey and other good things 
for dinner, the breaking of my yearling 
calves, skating without skates on the ice, 
sliding down the hill on sleds and planks — 
tobogganing they call it now, though we 
did’nt know the word then — popping and 
eating pop-corn, cracking and eating hick- 
ory-nuts and walnuts, of which we had sev- 
eral bushels in store, no girls to bother us, 
parched “goobers” by the bushel, snow 
and sugar and cream mixed, running rab- 
bits, and all the good things “ Old Santa” 
might bring. It absolutely made me tired 
carrying all these good things on the top of 
my memory, and I panted for breath when 
I began to name them over. 

Christmas-eve came at last. It was a 
dead certainty if we lived till to-morrow. 
It would have been hard to have died that 
night with such a wealth of pleasure before 
one’s eye. I was restless for mother to 
have prayers so I could get to bed, away 
from the noise and confusion of the family, 
where I could lie and roll and think and lay 
plans for the coming Christmas. I was 
sure I would be sugared all over that night 


A CHRISTMAS STORY. I97 

with the sweetness of the anticipations that 
lay before me. Mother read about Joseph 
and Mary going up to Bethlehem to attend 
the taxing ordered by Caesar Augustus, as 
appropriate to that evening, commented 
upon it, and led us in a sweet prayer. I 
was soon in bed and soon asleep, but full 
of dreams all night long. 

Early next morning, long before day, 
while it was yet dark- — without being called, 
for a wonder — I was up to build a fire, and 
lo! right near the fire-place stood a long,* 
slim, single-barreled shot-gun, and lying by 
it two pounds of powder and eight pounds of 
shot. A card on the gun read: “To Gil- 
deroy, with compliments of ‘ Old Santa.’’’ 
Of all things under the sun I wanted a gun 
most, and there it was, and my own gun at 
that. I read that card over and over, I 
don’t know how many times. The hand- 
writing looked rather suspicious, and I told 
mother it looked like hers. She said it 
was. “When ‘Old Santa’ came he was 
too cold to write, and in too great a hurry 
to get warm, so he asked me to write the 
card for him.” I saw into it then, or I 


ODD HOURS. 


198 

thought I did. Mother had to talk pretty 
sharply to get me away from that gun to 
feed the horse and to milk and feed the 
cows. 

When breakfast came on I found that my 
appetite was gone. I was full already — full 
of something, I hardly knew what. It was 
manifest that I had no room or desire for 
food. About 8 o’clock here came my three 
friends before named, all full of life, and 
running over with good cheer. The gun 
Vas the first thing and the great thing. 
“Old Santa” had outdone himself in that. 
The like of it had never before been heard 
of in that part of the country. 

So, without waiting to warm, or for any 
thing, we boys had to repair to the woods 
to try that gun. We started for the woods, 
and took it time about carrying the gun and 
shooting at every bird we saw, missing every 
thing we shot at. When one went to shoot, 
the other three shut their eyes and stopped 
their ears, and I suppose the marksman shut 
his eyes, and in pulling the trigger' (a little 
hard) he brought the gun to an angle of 
forty-five degrees, and shot a hole in the air. 


A CHRISTMAS STORY. I99 

We hunted for feathers and blood, but found 
none. After wasting nearly half our pow- 
der and shot we concluded there was better 
game, tamer game, and game more easily 
killed on the other side of a small creek that 
ran back of our field ; so we started for that 
place. The creek was level full, and we 
had to cross it on a log, and the log was a 
shield of ice from one end to the other. 
Phares, the oldest and boldest of the four, 
“cooned” it over first. Thomas followed 
him. I was to go next with the gun, and 
Ludlow, the youngest, was to bring up the 
rear. That was the slickest log I ever saw 
in my life. The gun was unhandy, and 
powerfully in my way. I tried it this way 
and that, but fix it as I would it was in the 
way. Pushing it before me, and slowly 
‘‘ cooning ” my way, I got about the middle 
of the creek, when all of a sudden my hand 
slipped, and in trying to recover myself, my 
gun, alas! slipped into the creek, and was 
gone in a jiffy in water ten feet deep. If it 
had been a solid bar of gold, I would not 
have been half so sad. My spirits fell with 
a thud from fever heat to forty degrees be- 


200 


ODD HOURS 


low zero in half a minute. Ludlow, a good- 
humored boy, was disposed to laugh at the 
mishap, but he soon found it was no laugh- 
ing matter with some of us. We got back 
to the house, all of us crest-fallen, and I 
completely heart-broken, and told mother 
the sad story of the loss of the gun. It was 
genuine comfort to me when she assured me 
the gun would not be hurt, and that I could 
get it in a day or two, as soon as the creek 
fell, which I did. 

If she had scolded me, as parents gener- 
ally do, and as mothers frequently did, it 
would have been a sorrow too heavy to be 
borne, but her sympathy and assuring and 
consoling words were as a balm to my soul. 

That accident blasted all my anticipations 
and plans for that Christmas, and instead 
of being the most joyous, as it promised to 
be, it was among the saddest and darkest 
Christmases I’ve ever known — all from the 
temporary loss of an eight-dollar shot-gun. 

On what little things and by what slender 
threads the happiness of children and young 
people, and of grown people too, hang in 
this world ! How real, how hard, and how 


A CHRISTMAS STORY. 


201 


heart-breaking the tiny sorrows of children 
are ! and O how they appreciate sympathy 
and consolation in times of trial! 

May Christmas be joyous and glad to 
all readers, both young and old I Let all 
remember that this life is one of suffering, 
sorrow, and sadness, as well as one of joy 
and gladness. We get as much real good 
out of our sorrows as out of our joys, or 
more. Both belong to the course of study 
in the school of Christ. Our Saviour, 
whose birth we celebrate, was “a man of 
sorrows, and acquainted with grief.’’ His 
great heart of sympathy yearns in tender- 
ness toward all the suffering and sorrowing 
sons and daughters of men, be they young 
or old. He is just as keenly alive to all our 
innocent and pure joys in this life. Let us 
make him one with us at the festal board in 
all our homes at the Christmas season. 


THE BATTLE OF WILLOW 
BRANCH, 


HE battle of Willow Branch was one 



• • of the most hotly contested engage- 


ments of the late war between the 


States. This battle, however, was an en- 
gagement between soldiers from the same 
State, none but Mississippians being en- 


gaged in it. 


Willow Branch, so named by the soldiers 
because there are so many willows growing 
along its banks, is on the Cleveland wagon- 
road, two miles north of Dalton, Ga. Along 
this little stream, and on either side of it, 
Gen. Tucker’s brigade was camped dur- 
ing the winter preceding the memorable 
Georgia campaign. This brigade had been 
thrown out on this road, in front of the 
Army of Tennessee, to do picket duty along 
that part of Gen. Johnston’s line. The 
brigade was made up of the Seventh, Ninth, 
Tenth, Forty-first, and Forty-fourth Missis- 


( 202 ) 


THE BATTLE OF WILLOW BRANCH. 203 

sippi regiments, and a battalion of sharp- 
shooters composed of picked men from the 
several regiments named. 

A more gallant or reliable brigade was 
not to be found in the Army of Tennessee, 
nor in any of the armies of the Confederate 
States. At the time of which we write this 
command, bearing the sobriquet of “The 
High-pressure Brigade,’’ was led by the 
chivalrous and intrepid brigadier-general, 
W, F. Tucker, than whom no truer man 
ever drew his sword in defense of his coun- 
try and his home. 

The command was camped on two low 
hills separated by a narrow defile, along 
which Willow Branch wound its tortuous 
way to Mill Creek, a mile south. This 
branch afforded an abundant supply of 
water for the troops. 

On the east side of it the Tenth and 
Forty-fourth Mississippi regiments and the 
battalion of sharp-shooters were encamped, 
and on the west side the Seventh, Ninth, 
and Forty-first regiments were quartered. 

Here we spent a quiet and in many re- 
spects a pleasant and comfortable winter. 


ODD HOURS. 


204 

The soldiers had built for themselves good 
pole cabins, chinked and daubed, covered 
with clapboards, having dirt floors and good 
stick and dirt chimneys with wide, open 
fire-places. There was a cofnpetenc}^ of 
good, plain food. The supply of clothing 
and shoes was scant at times. 

These brave men occupied the time in 
many different ways, according to their sev- 
eral tastes, and in exact keeping with the 
different degrees of moral and intellectual 
development found among them. Some of 
them were exceedingly hungry for spiritual 
food, others for intellectual food, others for 
animal food, while others gave themselves 
to every unholy lust, as if bent on satiat- 
ing the baser passions of their depraved 
hearts. Many of the men, who had a 
passion for whittling, developed quite an in- 
dustry, making pipes from bamboo brier- 
roots, and various articles, useful or orna- 
mental, from the fine-grained wild ivy 
growing in that part of the, country. 

While camped at this place a most won- 
derful revival of religion, of great depth 
and power, began and continued with in- 


THE BATTLE OF WILLOW BRANCH. 205 

creasing interest through all kinds of weath- 
er until the opening of the spring campaign 
when Gen. Sherman began his ‘‘ On to At- 
lanta march. 

In this revival more than four hundred 
strong men were happily converted and 
added to the Christian Association of the 
brigade — a kind of “Church in the wilder- 
ness,” which we carried with us wherever 
we went. Christian men of every name 
and order, who felt the need of Christian 
communion and association, were taken into 
this organization. The memory of this pre- 
cious meeting will linger long after the 
hardships of army and camp life have faded 
away. Many a man who found Christ pre- 
cious to his soul during this revival found a 
soldier’s grave before the end of that hard 
campaign. 

In the month of March, while the army 
was camped at Dalton, Ga., snow fell to the 
depth of eighteen or twenty inches. This 
was at once an event and an era in the life 
of native-born Mississippians. Few of them 
had ever seen a fall of snow that would 
measure more than six inches. All the men, 


2o6 


ODD HOURS. 


except a few “ sober-sides/^ seemed deter- 
mined to enjoy that snow to the fullest ex- 
tent. 

It was during this snow that the battle of 
Willow Branch was fought. The brigade 
was organized into two armies, known as 
the Army of the East and the Army of the 
West. The three regiments camped on the 
west side of Willow Branch composed the 
Army of the West, commanded, for the 
time, by the gallant and dashing Col. Byrd 
Williams, who afterward fell while leading 
his regiment, the Forty-first Mississippi, in 
a charge at Jonesboro, Ga. 

The Army of the East, composed of the 
two regiments and battalion of sharp-shoot- 
ers camped on that side of the branch, was 
commanded by the chivalrous Colonel, aft- 
erward General, J. H. Sharp, who now lives 
in quietude in Lowndes county, Miss. 

One army challenged the other to a battle 
with snow-balls along the margin of Willow 
Branch. The challenge was accepted, and 
the bugles sounded “To arms! ’’ 

At no time during the whole war was that 
call more anxiously or more readily obeyed. 


THE BATTLE OF WILLOW BRANCH. 20*J 

“Victory or a freeze!’’ was written on ev- 
ery face. 

The surgeons, to a man, requested the 
privilege of taking part in this fight. Even 
the litter corps, hospital stewards, commis- 
saries, quartermasters, and teamsters, gen- 
erally so serviceable elsewhere in a battle, 
were “spoiling for a fight” when this en- 
gagement was about to be joined. Not a 
single man, so far as I now remember, 
asked to be excused from duty that day. 
The two chaplains of the command, one a 
Baptist preacher in the Army of the West, 
and the other a Methodist preacher in the 
Army of the East, both young men, re- 
quested to be put in the forefront of the bat- 
tle on this occasion. In view^ of the fact 
that their services would not be needed else- 
where their urgent request was granted by 
the temporary generals in command. 

Pickets and skirmishers were thrown out 
to protect the armies while the lines were 
being formed. This done, the command, 
“Forward, march,” was given, and with 
a fearful yell the two armies rushed upon 
each other amidst a blinding shower of 


2o8 


ODD HOURS. 


snow-balls. They met at Willow Branch, 
when a desperate hand-to-hand fight ensued, 
many of the men locking arms and rolling 
in the snow until one or both parties became 
completely exhausted from over-exertion. 
Not a drop of blood was shed, so far as I 
know, though every man’s nose looked like 
the blood was ready to fly out of it. 

The brunt of the battle was fought at the 
bridge across Willow Branch. 

It was on this bridge that the chaplains 
met and locked arms and began to wrestle 
for the mastery. The troops on each side 
cheered lustily, and pelted these brethren 
with showers of snow-balls, while they 
hugged and tripped according to the rules 
of wrestling in vogue when they were boys. 
At last they made what the boys used to 
call a “dog-fall,” both of them tumbling 
over the end of the bridge and crushing 
through the ice into two-feet water in the 
branch below. 

The Baptist preacher gained his feet first, 
and, jumping astride his Methodist brother, 
he said, “ Now Fve got you where I wanted 
you,” and proceeded to “souse” him un- 


THE BATTLE OF WILLOW BRANCH. 2O9 

der the water in the most unceremonious 
way imaginable. The Methodist preacher 
was a wiry little man, and he succeeded in 
turning his Baptist brother under, when he 
repeated the “ sousing” operation until the 
Baptist preacher cried, “ Enough ! enough !” 
This pass between the preachers so con- 
vulsed the armies with laughter that the. bat- 
tle suddenly cstme to an end without a de- 
cisive victory for either side. 

The Army of the East was greatly pained 
to learn that its leader. Col. Sharp, was se- 
riously, though not mortally, wounded in 
the right sleeve of his new uniform coat. 
The wound healed by “ first intention” un- 
der the skillful management of Dr. Tailor. 

The delightful Christian harmony and 
warm brotherly love of the chaplains were 
not cooled in the least by the dipping they 
gave each other in the ice-water in Willow 
Branch. 

There are more pleasant reminiscences 
connected with the battle of Willow Branch 
than with any other battle in which the 
“ High-pressure Brigade” took part during 
the whole war. 

14 


210 


ODD HOURS. 


Whenever two or more members of the 
old brigade meet and begin to recount the 
scenes and trials of army-life, this battle is 
sure to be mentioned before the conversa- 
tion ends. 


TWO STAMPEDES. 


OR several weeks preceding the bat- 



tle of Chickamauga the Army of 


1 Tennessee, then commanded by Gen. 
Braxton Bragg, was marching and counter- 
marching here and there, as if there were 
great uncertainty as to where the enemy 
would strike. So, at least, it seemed to 
the men in the ranks. Doubtless all these 
movements were made necessary by the 
movements of the Federal army, then try- 
ing to flank the Army of Tennessee out of 
Chattanooga, a position apparently impreg- 
nable by direct attack. Be all this as it 
may, the marching and counter-marchir^ 
was done, a kind of seesaw game, first 
down the country and then up the river 
again. 

Gen. Leonidas Polk’s Corps, it seemed, 
was the flying brigade of the army, and the 
troops of this corps were on the wing both 
day and night for three or four weeks in 


( 211 ) . 


212 


ODD HOURS. 


succession. This command was under or- 
ders all the time to be ready to move at a 
moment’s warning; and the warnings came 
two or three times every twenty-four hours, 
or so it appeared to men worn down by a 
long, hard campaign. 

At last, after seesawing from right to left 
and left to right of the army until patience 
had ceased to be a virtue, Polk’s Corps be- 
gan to move slowly southward down the val- 
ley on the east side of Lookout Mountain. 
We moved at a snail’s pace as though every 
inch of ground were dangerous, or stub- 
bornly contested. That it was not contest- 
ed we knew right well, because there was no 
fighting in front or on either flank. It was 
march and halt, and halt and march, the 
most fatiguing and worrying of all the serv- 
ice a soldier, has to do. It was more trying 
to the patience and nerves of a fatigued 
soldiery than a battle or a charge would 
have been. So far as we could see or un- 
derstand there was no design in this other 
than to wear the men out and to try their 
powers of endurance. 

It was some consolation when, after a few 


TWO STAMPEDES. 


213 

days of this provoking service, news spread 
throughout the command that one corps of 
the Federal army was moving down the 
mountain on the west side, trying to find a 
crossing so as to get in the rear of Gen. 
Bragg^s army, still in and around Chatta- 
nooga. This news put new life into the 
troops. They understood, or thought they 
understood, something of the cause or the 
occasion of the slow and cautious move- 
ments directed by Gen. Polk. 

Finally an order came detailing Gen. T. C. 
Hindman’s Division for special and impor- 
tant service. This order came about night, 
and with it instructions to cook up three 
days’ rations, and to leave knapsacks and all 
heavy baggage behind in care of a special de- 
tail made for that purpose. It was under- 
stood that we were to march in light order. 
Early the next morning before it was light, 
this division, right in front, headed down 
the valley ready and anxious for something 
exciting to turn up. But to the surprise, 
and I may say to the disgust of the troops, 
the slow, tedious, and provoking movement 
of the past few days was continued. The 


214 


ODD HOURS 0 


complaints coming up from all quarters were 
long and loud. So it went until late in the 
afternoon about 4 o'clock, when the com- 
mand was suddenly and rapidly thrgwn into 
line of battle across the narrow valley, and 
at right angles to the line of march. The 
battalion of sharp-shooters was deployed in 
front, and ordered to move rapidly and si- 
lently forward. This began to look like 
business, though there was no firing in 
front, and no other signs of an immediate 
engagement. However, it was a change, 
and brought some relief. 

As soon as the lines were formed, dressed, 
and every thing put in order, word was 
passed along among the men that one divis- 
ion of the Federal army had crossed the 
mountain and was then bivouacked in Swe- 
den’s Cove, a mile or two ahead of us; and 
that if the troops were on the alert and rap- 
id in their movements they would capture 
the road by which the Federals had crossed 
over, and would bag that division in the cove 
below without the loss of a man. It was 
understood that the cove was shut in by 
impassable mountains, particularly on the 


TWO STAMPEDES. 


215 

west side, the only direction the Federals 
would care to go. This was a pretty game 
and a tempting bait. The idea of capturing 
a division as large as our own, or larger, at 
one swoop without the loss of a man, put all 
the men on springs, and made them eager for 
the fray to begin. Straightway the boys be- 
gan to plan for new shoes, new hats, new 
suits of clothing, and one more taste of 
genuine coffee, a great rarity in the South- 
ern army at that time. Of course they did 
not mean to steal these things, nor to take 
them by force, but merely to exchange 
clothing with to captured men. 

In a short while, in less time than it takes 
to tell it, the sharp, quick firing of the sharp- 
shooters was heard in front, and was soon 
followed by a genuine “Rebel yell,’’ by 
which token we knew a strong point had 
been gained. The line of battle immediate- 
ly moved forward at double-quick time, and 
soon came upon the sharp-shooters in pos- 
session of the road, the only way of escape 
the Federals had. So the game was in the 
bag and a strong line of battle across the 
open end of it. 


2i6 


ODD HOURS. 


Orders were given to move steadily and 
rapidly, though cautiously, down the cove, 
and to take in the game without sacrificing 
a single life if possible. It was understood 
the Federals had been taken by surprise, 
and were thoroughly stampeded so that of- 
ficers had no control of their men. The 
men were said to be flying in all directions 
for safety. With this a battery of light ar- 
tillery began to shell the woods down to- 
ward the end of the cove, some two miles 
distant. 

It is impossible to describe the alacrity 
with which the Confederates pressed for- 
ward, cheered by the prospect of capturing 
ever^^man of the Federals and all they had. 
There was but little firing save that by the 
artillery, for there was need for none. I do 
not now remember that the Federals fired a 
single gun. We lost no man, and had none 
wounded, not one. 

Alas ! however, when we came to where 
the Federals had been, and where we hoped 
to make them prisoners of war, we found 
nothing but their arms, artillery, and small- 
arms, their wagons and teams, heavy bag- 


TWO STAMPEDES. 


217 

bage, and camp equipage. The fires were 
still burning, kettles steaming, bread about 
done, and the air laden with the delicious 
aroma of coffee that was coffee. There is 
absolutely no substitute under heaven for 
this delightful beverage. The Federals had 
scaled the mountain one by one, which, 
from where we stood, appeared to be inac- 
cessible to a mountain goat. We could see 
them clambering up its sides far out of reach 
of the Enfield rifles with which we were 
armed. So we gathered up the booty, 
feasted on the bread and meat, drank the 
coffee, faced about, and slowly and some- 
what sorrowfully took the end of the road 
leading out toward La Fayette, Ga. 

By this time it was well on into the night, 
and it was understood by the men that we 
were on the road for an all night’s march. 
Indeed, it was barely possible for the Fed- 
erals to play the same game on us that night 
that we had played on them the evening be- 
fore. The column headed up the valley for 
a few miles, then crossed a very high hill, 
or a low mountain, and about midnight 
turned due south into a narrow defile be- 


2i8 


ODD HOURS. 


tween two mountains, called, as I remem- 
ber it. Cadet’s Gap. It was a dark, dreary, 
dismal-looking place. There wound along 
down this gorge between the mountains a 
serpentine creek with steep and rocky banks, 
gravelly bed, and with great bowlders of 
rock here and there along its tortuous 
course. In many places the road lay along 
the bed of this creek, and then again it 
crossed and recrossed this stream four or 
five times in a hundred yards. The creek 
was dry, or nearly so, at that time. 

This gap, as I remember it, was three or 
four miles long. The artillery, our own 
and that captured in Sweden’s Cove, the 
ordnance train, and the ambulances were 
all in front. When these began to go up 
the mountain out of this gap, then began 
again that slow and intensely worrying proc- 
ess of marching a few paces and halting for 
ten or fifteen minutes. 

Fortunately, by this time the moon, then 
far on the wane, was high enough to throw 
some rays of light into this wild, weird pass 
between the overshadowing hills on either 
side. The long, black shadows of the trees 


TWO STAMPEDES. 219 

were like specters in that trough between 
the mountains. 

Somewhere about two or three o’clock in 
the morning the men, completely worn out 
by the hard service of the past few weeks 
and from loss of sleep, got so they would 
fall down in the road and go to sleep almost 
as soon as the command “ Halt” was given. 
These, however, were only cat-naps that 
tended to aggravate rather than rest the 
men. Thus it went for an hour or more. 

Finally we made a much longer halt than 
usual, and the officers and nearly all of the 
men were soon lost in deep sleep, some with 
their heads pillowed on cartridge-boxes, 
some on stones, and some on billets of 
wood. 

In front, at the head of the column, which 
was nearly two miles long, a colonel’s horse, 
in trying to bite the bushes to stay his hun- 
ger, accidentally trod on his master’s face. 
The colonel, who lay sleeping under his 
horse’s feet, sprung up crying, “Whoa! 
whoa! ” at the top of his voice. This cry 
was repeated by the next man and the next, 
and thus it passed back along the line like 


220 


ODD HOURS. 


a cyclone. Each man sprung up crying, 
“ Whoa 1 whoa ! ’’ 

The whole command was thoroughly 
stampeded, and doubtless the men would 
have scattered in all directions but for the 
precipitous mountain barriers on either 
hand. 

Many of the men, in a mad rush for their 
lives, fell over the banks of the creek among 
the rocks, and some had their arms and legs 
broken, and others were badly bruised about 
their heads and faces and in other ways. 
Some began to climb the mountains, and oth- 
ers scaled the trees and saplings that stood 
near by. The wildest confusion prevailed, 
and hats, caps, guns, and accouterments 
were strewed in all directions. It took some 
of the men several days to get their affairs 
to rights again. When I came to myself, I 
was standing on a log some twenty steps 
from the road screaming, “ Whoa ! whoa ! ” 
as loud as I could. I did not know where 
I was nor how I got there, and I could not 
have told my right-hand from my left for 
some time. Near me, about half-way up a 
tree the size of my body, I saw the gallant 


TWO STAMPEDES. 


221 


Capt. Tom Bell astride a limb, and saying 
in a firm voice: “Steady, boys, steady. 
Where is my sword ? ’ ’ 

The men were completely bewildered, and 
some were stupefied with fear for the time. 
Hundreds of good men said: “The Fed--^ 
eral cavalry made a dash down the mount- 
ain, and ran right over our command,” As 
many more said : “ Four horses with a caisson 
of ammunition attached ran down the road 
toward the rear.” Others said: “A single 
mad horse with harness on ran over the 
sleeping men.” Still others, good men 
who were wide awake and duly sober, said : 
“Nothing passed except a wave of excite- 
ment that produced a regular stampede.” 

Truth is said to be stranger than fiction. 
This story, incredible as it may appear to 
be to those who know nothing of a stam- 
pede, can be confirmed by the testimony of 
many living witnesses. I find an old sol- 
dier now and then, who still persists in say- 
ing: “A horse with harness on did run down 
the road that night in Cadet’s Gap.” 

It was all an illusion, a dream of the 
night, to every sleeping man in the com- 


222 


ODD HOURS. 


mand, except to the colonel at the head of 
the column, whose face bore to the grave 
the print of his horse’s shoe. 

This is the story of the stampedes of Swe- 
den’s Cove and Catlet’s Gap as I remember 
them at this distance of time. 






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